Economical Optimization of Activated Sludge

In the past years, environmental pollution brought about due to the disposal of different wastes such as municipal, industrial, and agricultural wastes in Iran has converted the treatment and control of these contaminants to an important priority in protection, management, and planning of the environment. In this regard, authorities in the country have imported a variety of technologies for wastewater treatment systems including activated sludge system. Although there exists many references for design of such systems and a good progress in this regard has been made, but lack of experience and / or knowledge in construction, operation, and maintenance of treatment systems in addition to their high cost is still a dilemma that makes it very difficult to select a suitable system. Therefore, in order to save time and capital, it is necessary and inevitable to optimize the common wastewater treatment systems in Iran, specially activated sludge from an economical perspective.In this paper, the activated sludge system for treatment of municipal wastewater has been optimized using a dynamic computer program such that the special intorrolation of different stages in the system can be properly modeled in this program construction, operation, maintenance, and repair costs of different units in an activated sludge treatment system have been evaluated using civil, mechanical, electrical, and construction plants for every structure and available standard charts and tables in the literature. Optimization has been performed with different combinations of the distinet units in the system. At the end, considering the increasing investment of the country in wastewater treatment plants and the need for economical considerations, complexities are investigated, explanations are presented, and some recommendations are made in that regard.