Optimal scheduling of booster disinfection in water distribution networks

Booster disinfection stations are the solution alternative to maintain required disinfectant residual concentration in water distribution networks. In the present study, an optimisation problem to determine the optimum injection rates is solved. The minimisation of the total injected mass is considered as the objective function which is subjected to bound constraints on chlorine concentration. Two formulations are used for the linear optimisation problem, with and without considering the initial concentrations as unknowns. Determination of variable network hydraulics and chlorine concentrations is achieved by EPANET. A C++ code was developed to interface with EPANET by means of the EPANET Programmer's Toolkit for optimisation of the disinfectant mass applied to the network. Finally, a cross check is achieved in EPANET software for both disinfectant residual concentrations and linear superposition principle.