Problem

Can SewerGEMS or CivilStorm model hydraulic components of a sewage / waste water treatment plant?

Solution

The OpenFlows storm and sewer products are designed to model storm water or wastewater pipes, pumps, wet wells, pressure pipes, weirs, orifice, culverts, ponds etc. which are part of the piped network for carrying wastewater to the treatment plants.

The waste water treatment plant units / hydraulic structures can be modeled using conduit control structures connected with manholes, or ponds with composite outlet structures (orifice, weir, rating curve) using SewerGEMS or CivilStorm. The Explicit (SWMM) solver solver is best suited for such cases; make sure to use a small Routing Step (calculation option) such as 1 seconds, to get better results.

If there are no flow splits or loops and you can represent the treatment plant components as conduit control structures, you could also use the GVF-Convex solver in SewerGEMS or SewerCAD as shown in the screenshot below. Otherwise a flow split with the GVF-Convex solver would require a diversion rating curve.

Detailed modeling or analysis of the inner workings of the treatment plant (structural, chemical, etc) are outside of the scope of SewerCAD, SewerGEMS and CivilStorm and would need to be performed elsewhere.

See Also

Case study entitled “A balancing act” by Thomas Walski, CENews, May 2005

Modelling Inlet Works of a Treatment Plant

Using Start and Stop Control Structures for conduits and channels

Differences between solvers: GVF-Convex vs. GVF-Rational vs. Implicit vs. Explicit (SWMM) 

Wastewater Treatment Plant Software