Conceptual design of wastewater treatment plants using a design support system

A case study showed the advantages of using a design support system during the design and retrofit of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). The Manresa WWTP was chosen to demonstrate these advantages. While the records of the decision-making process used during the Manresa WWTP design were not available to the authors, its original design objectives and the resulting structure and values for its more important variables were. A simplified but plausible design history focusing on the design decisions and not on the detailed modelling of the WWTP was generated with this information. Using such a design history it is possible (1) to evaluate automatically the compliance of alternative design proposals with respect to the design objectives; (2) to study the influence of the weight of the arguments in the selection of the most adequate proposal; (3) to document the decision-making process; and (4) to assist the designer in the search of specific items within the historical records during the review of the current design or during the retrofit of the plant. (C) 2000 Society of Chemical Industry.