Smart-Plant Decision Support System (SP-DSS): Defining a multi-criteria decision-making framework for the selection of WWTP configurations with resource recovery

The development of the Smart-Plant Decision Support System (SP-DSS) is presented, which helps to find optimal water resource recovery facility (WRRF) configuration for a specific case. A general plant superstructure defined allow evaluation different combinations among available process unit options, considering technical, economic, and environmental impact criteria. complete based on five-step framework: (i) design problem set-up, (ii) wastewater inflow generation, (iii) generation plant-wide model simulation under dynamic conditions, (iv) estimation multi-criteria objective values (greenhouse gas emissions, accumulation effluent violations, quality index, net present value, system readiness level land area), (v) sorting with technique order preference by similarity ideal solution (TOPSIS). SP-DSS application shown comparing mainstream shortcut enhanced phosphorus polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) (SCEPPHAR) technology conventional anaerobic/anoxic/aerobic (A2O) medium size WWTP (Manresa, Spain). comparison shows both configurations meeting discharge limits, other criteria, SCEPPHAR novel configuration, respect A2O, higher pollutant contents in (3.30 vs 2.34 gPoll/m3), capital expenditures (CAPEX 0.191 0.130 €/m3), lower operational (OPEX 0.397 0.515 required tariff (0.654 0.674 €/m3) greenhouse emissions (GHG 0.19 0.14 kgCO2/m3). Overall, TOPSIS indicates A2O still best this