Calibration and validation of a dynamic model for water quality in combined sewer retention tanks

Abstract

As the integrated management of urban wastewater systems becomes more and more popular, the development of wastewater management subsystem models appears essential to improve the understanding of the pollutant dynamics and their interactions. In such a context, a review of the literature reveals a lack of efficient models describing the dynamics of the water quality stored in off-line retention tanks. A model has thus been proposed based on the fractionation of suspended solids into three classes according to the particle settling velocity distribution measured in the field using the ViCAs settling test. In this paper, a calibration methodology is developed and full-scale field data sets from three different events are used for 1) calibrating this new dynamic retention tank model (two data sets); and 2) validating that model on the last data set. The results show a good agreement between observed and simulated data both for the total suspended solids and the total chemical oxygen demand.

Keywords::

• combined sewer overflow
• settling velocity
• stormwater management
• urban wastewater modelling
• water quality
• wet weather

Acknowledgements

The authors want to acknowledge the retEAU project team for their precious help and the city of Quebec for its technical support.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this work comes from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies (FRQNT). Peter Vanrolleghem holds the Canada Research Chair on Water Quality Modelling.