A CFD-based compartmental modelling approach for long-term dynamic simulation of water resource recovery facilities

This article presents a methodology for compartmental model (CM) creation for long-term simulation of water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). CMs are often focused on reproducing with a lower computational cost than previously simulated scenarios. In contrast, the methodology presented here can represent variable hydraulic conditions, based on the interpolation of data gathered from a set of computational fluid dynamics simulations that reproduce representative hydraulic scenarios. This is achieved by modelling with bidirectional flows the exchange flows between fixed compartments, which are defined based on the geometry of the reactors. The resultant hydraulic surrogate model can be implemented in commercial water treatment software to solve biochemical kinetics. The methodology was applied to simulate in WEST®-DHI, a WRRF in Vila-Real, Spain. In this contribution, the CM was validated with real plant data. The developed CM provided a quick response simulation with a high level of hydraulic and biochemical detail. This allowed us to observe a spatial distribution of component concentration, which could help with sensor location or plant optimisation. The methodology presented here could also be a useful enabler of digital twins to be implemented in WRRF.