An optimal water regeneration, reuse and resource recovery network integrating domestic and industrial sources

Abstract

Abstract Implementation of reduce, reuse, recycle strategies are pertinent to ensure sustainability. There are studies to minimize freshwater reduction via mathematical modelling method. However, study to explore possibilities of combining both domestic and industrial wastewater regeneration, reuse, and resource recovery in a centralised facility is yet to be made. This study develops a mathematical model that could provide optimal water regeneration and reuse network that also be capable to produce biogas from the selected wastewater streams. The main objective is to maximize profit from the network established. A superstructure that consists of sources, outsource, freshwater, mixers-demands, and biogas systems is developed. A combination of the sources, regenerated sources, outsource water, and freshwater is performed in the mixers. The multi integer non-linear programming (MINLP) model is optimized by BARON solver in General Algebraic Modelling System (GAMS) software. The case study result shows that freshwater water saving is 42% and 377 kW of electricity can be generated from the biogas produced. This offers possibilities to consider the idea of the centralised wastewater facility that considers water regeneration, reuse, and resource recovery for both domestic and industrials sources, as the Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) may serve as the suitable platform.