Application of stormwater mass–volume curve prediction for water quality-based real-time control in sewer systems

ABSTRACT

Reducing emitted pollutant loads via combined sewer overflow (CSO) structures is important to protect receiving water bodies. This study implements two real-time control (RTC) strategies: water quality-based RTC (QBR) using mass–volume (MV) curves versus simple hydraulics-based RTC (HBR) on a small sewer network and then uses the performance of HBR as a reference to evaluate the performance of QBR. The control strategies are tested on 31 storm events with CSOs over a two-year period. Compared to HBR, QBR delivers CSO load reduction for more than one-third of the storm events, with reduction values from 3% to 43%. By characterizing the MV curves, it is possible to sort the storm events into three groups having different probabilities of the benefit of QBR. Sensitivity analysis results also indicate the significant impact of control time interval and retention tank volume towards the efficiency of QBR.

KEYWORDS:

• Mass-volume curve
• real time control
• combined sewer overflow

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the EU funding for the LIFE EFFIDRAIN project and great technical and financial supports from Bordeaux Métropole and Société de Gestion de l’Assainissement de Bordeaux Métropole (SGAC).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission research grant for the LIFE EFFIDRAIN project [LIFE14 ENV/ES/000860].