Practical Optimization of Looped Water Systems

This paper describes one tool that might be part of a package to assist a design engineer in sizing pipes, determining ideal locations for booster pumps and their heads, determining heads that source pumps should supply, and establishing water surface elevations of storage tanks or reservoirs to achieve a near minimum cost network based on appropriate cost parameters. A very limited amount of assistance is provided in establishing the layout of the system. The assumption is that water must be pumped and this costs energy. Therefore, a least cost, or near least cost, water distribution system will be one in which the pressures throughout the system are close to the minimum pressure allowed under the peak, or near peak demands. One such a near least cost system is tentatively established, its adequacy needs to be verified by analyses covering typical current and future conditions, including time dependent solutions over such periods as 24 hours.