Integral Water Treatment Plant Design Optimization : A Genetic Algorithm

Based Approach
A K Gupta, Non-member
Dr R K Shrivastava, Fellow
This paper develops and demonstrates the solution for integrated water treatment plant design using genetic algorithm (GA). The GA approach
is found to be useful optimization tool, capable of providing optimal design parameter estimates while incorporating design and effluent quality
constraints. The GA approach has been presented with a case study and the solution obtained using GA is compared with the solution obtained
by dynamic programming (DP) . The results obtained confirm the capability of proposed method for optimal design of water treatment plant.
The CPU time required is almost one-tenth and storage space required is very-very less eliminating the problem of ‘curse of dimensionality’ posed
by DP programming. Additionally the information provided by GA can be utilized to test the model sensitivity.

Keywords: Water treatment plant; Genetic algorithm; Dynamic programming

NOTATION dynamic programming5, however the non-linear programming is

quite complex, time consuming and do not guarantee the optimum,
GR : velocity gradient in rapid mix unit, 1/s while the dynamic programming suffers with well known problem
TR : detention time in rapid mix unit, s of ‘curse of dimensionality’.

GS : velocity gradient in flocculation unit, 1/s
TS : detention time in flocculation unit, s
SOR : surface over flow rate in sedimentation tank, m3/m2/h
FR : filtration rate in filter unit, m3/m2/h
H : head loss in filter unit, m
Frun : time of filter run, h
INTRODUCTION
Water treatment plant (WTP) is a part of urban water supply
system accounting 15% to 20% of the total expenditure incurred
on urban water supply. The principal unit processes involved in
conventional water treatment system include coagulation-floccu-
lation, sedimentation, filtration and disinfection. The traditional
practice in water treatment plant design is to design individual treat-
ment unit in the treatment train based on standards. As the perfor-
mance of each treatment unit affects the efficiency of subsequent
treatment units (eg , increased detention time in flocculation might
result in larger floc formation, better removal in sedimentation,
and larger filter runs), ideally therefore decision should be made
with regard to interaction between various unit operations1. The
funds needed for construction, maintenance and operation of the
system imply that a good compromise between technical and eco-
nomic aspects must be achieved. Lawler, et al 2 first presented inte-
grated simulation model of WTP later modified by Ramaley, et al 1.
Few attempts have been made for optimal design of integrated
water treatment plant based on non-linear programming3,4 and
Recently the application of genetic algorithm is increasing in the
area of environmental engineering and water resources engineering.
A genetic algorithm is a stochastic search procedure that uses proba-
bilistic rather than deterministic search rules. The objective func-
tion magnitude, instead of derivative information is used directly
in search, therefore allowing GA to be applied to non-convex, highly
non-linear and complex problems6. Accordingly, this paper, pre-
sents a genetic algorithm based solution to optimal water treat-
ment design problem with design and effluent quality constraints.
In this paper, GA has been applied to a water treatment plant
design problem and the results obtained are compared with the
results obtained by dynamic programming. These results show ca-
pability of GA to provide good solution to WTP design problem
along with a solution to problem of ‘curse of dimensionality’.
OPTIMIZATION MODEL FORMULATION
The primary objective of the water treatment plant design is to
determine design and operating parameters of the process such
that the total cost is minimal and effluent quality meets the set
standards. In this study an optimization model has been devel-
oped, which combines the GA with simulation model for integral
water treatment analysis developed by Mhaisalkar,etal 5. The
details of the simulation model are illustrated in Mhaisalkar, et al 5
and CPHEEO Manual7. The model considers monodispersed and
homogeneous suspension and its mass concentration as sole
parameter to describe the quality of suspension and measure of
performance of treatment unit. For a conventional water treat-
ment system that include coagulation-flocculation, sedimentation
and filtration, the optimization problem is expressed as

A K Gupta and Dr R K Srivastava are engaged with Civil Engineering 4

Department and Applied Mechanics Department, respectively, SGSITS, Minimize f ( x ) = ∑ C i (1)
Indore. 1
This paper (modified ) was received on July 20, 2005. Written discussion on the
where Ci is annual cost of individual treatment unit that includes
paper will be entertained till November 30, 2006.
rapid mix unit, flocculation unit, sedimentation unit and filter unit.
Vol 87 , September 2006 3
Annual cost includes annualized capital cost, annual operation and Table 2 Implicit constraints on design and effluent quality
maintenance cost, and land requirement cost. Annualized capital Parameter Notation Value
cost can be expressed as:
Suspended solid concentration, mg/l SSesed ≤ 20
n in effluent from clarifier
(1 + i ) i
ACC = CC (2) Suspended solid concentration, mg/l SSefil ≤2
(1 + i )n − 1 in filtered water
Dia of sedimentation tank, m Dsed ≤ 60
where ACC is annualized capital cost; CC, capital cost; i, interest Sedimentation tank depth, m DS 3 ≤ CD ≤ 4
rate; and n is amortization period.
Detention time in, h DTS 2 ≤ DT ≤ 4
sedimentation tank
The objective function f(x) may be minimized subject to following
explicit and implicit constraints. Weir loading rate, m3/m-d WLR ≤ 600
Length of filter run, h Frun ≥ 24
Explicit Bound Constraints Maximum head loss in filter, m Hmax ≤ 2.5

Explicit bound constraints are used to set the limit on the explicit
decision variables of the design problem. The explicit decision
constraints for various treatment units are presented in Table 1.
Implicit Constraints
Implicit constraint includes design constraints and effluent quality
constraints as shown in Table 2.
Cost Function
mechanics of evolution in nature and in essence, consist of a popu-
lation of bit strings transformed by three genetic operators, such
as, selection, crossover and mutation. Each string (chromosome)
represents a possible solution to the problem being optimized and
each bit (or group of bits) represent a value of variable of the
problem (gene). A population of chromosomes represents a set of
possible solution. These solutions are classified by an evaluation
function, giving better values, or fitness, to better solutions.

To incorporate multiple design criteria in the optimization problem,
four design criteria to be evaluated from the cost function are
(1) Annualized capital cost; (2) Operation and maintenance cost;
(3) Energy requirement cost; and (4) Land requirement cost. The
relationship for above criteria were taken from Dharmappa, et al 4, 8
and Clark9.
GENETIC ALGORITHMS
Genetic algorithms are search algorithms based on mechanics of
natural selection and natural genetics. Philosophically GAs are based
on Darwin's theory of ‘survival of the fittest’. Genetic algorithm
has the following advantage over traditional methods.
(i) GAs search from a population of points, not a single point.
Hence GAs are said to be global optimization techniques.
(ii) GAs use only the value of objective function. The derivatives
are not used in the search process.
While many coding schemes of gene (decision variable) is possible,
Michaelewicz10 indicates that for real valued numerical optimization
problems, floating point representation outperforms binary repre-
sentations because they are more consistent, more precise and lead
to faster execution. They are convenient in keeping one-gene-one-
variable correspondence, in addition to the possibility of finding
best point regardless of initial population. Also for most applica-
tions of genetic algorithms to constrained optimization problems,
the real coding technique is used to represent the solution to a
problem.
A simple GA starts with initial population of randomly generated
chromosomes and improve upon an initial population of strings
representing a set of possible solutions by repeated application of
genetic operators to search efficient solution of the problem at
hand. A simple GA capable of producing good practical results is
more commonly composed of three genetic operators, such as,
selection, crossover, and mutation.

(iii) GAs use probabilistic transition rules, not deterministic rules. The application of GAs involves the appropriate choice of
the alphabet for representation of the decision variables of the
Genetic algorithms are, by far most popular form of evolutionary problem as well as an efficient selection, crossover and mutation
algorithms. They derive their behaviour from a metaphor of the scheme. In spite successful application of GAs to several kinds of
problems they do not guarantee the identification of global opti-
Table 1 Explicit constraint on decision variables
mum. The solution found by GAs must thus be considered to be
Unit Process Design Variable Notation Unit Range ‘near optimal’11.
-1
Rapid-mix unit Velocity gradient GR s 700 ≤ GR ≤ 1000
Real Coded GA
Detention time TR s 20 ≤ TR ≤ 40
Slow-mix unit Velocity gradient GS s-1 5 ≤ GS ≤ 100 As the independent variables are continuous floating numbers, it
Detention time TS s 600 ≤ TS ≤ 3600
has been found suitable to encode independent variables as a string
of floating point numbers Michaelewicz10. In floating point imple-
Sedimentation unit Surface overflow rate SOR m/h 1 ≤ SOR ≤ 1.6
mentation each chromosome was coded as a vector of floating
Filtration unit Filtration rate FR m/h 4.8 ≤ FR ≤ 7.2
point numbers, as the same length as the solution vector.

4 IE(I) Journal−EN
The precision of such representation depends on underlying ma-
chine, but is much better than binary representation. Of course,
introducing more bits can always extend the precision of binary
representation but this considerably slows down the algorithm.
Parents are initialized by selecting random number in the range
(0,1) for each element of chromosome. Each chromosome Xi = 1,
2,… ng in the population is converted in the form appropriate for
evaluation (actual problem variables, Xa ) and is then assigned a
fitness value, according to the objective function. Moreover, the
lower and upper bound inequality condition has been embedded
in the coding it self by the elements of chromosomes in the range
(0,1) using following encoding scheme.
Xa = X l + ( X u − X l )× X (3)
where Xl and Xu are lower and upper bound respectively on
problem variables and Xa is the actual solution vector and X is the
normalized solution vector. The GA operators (selection, cross-
over and mutation) are applied for several generations until one of
the individuals of population converges to an optimal value or the
required number of generations is reached.
GENETIC OPERATORS
A simple genetic algorithm (SGA) that yields good results in many
practical problems is composed of three operators, namely,
(1) selection (reproduction) (2) crossover (3) mutation.
Selection
From an initial random population, individual strings are copied
according to their fitness values. This process is known as selec-
tion (reproduction). The strings with higher fitness value have a
greater chance of being selected for mating. The selection opera-
tion is implemented using Roulette wheel selection, where each
current string in population has a Roulette wheel slot sized in pro-
portion to fitness. A simple spin of the weighted Roulette wheel
yields the reproduction candidate. Thus Roulette wheel spun ‘np’
(population size) times to select ‘np’ individuals.
Crossover
In its simpler form, crossover is considered as the partial exchange
of corresponding segments between two ‘parent’ strings to pro-
duce either one or more commonly two ‘offspring’ strings. The
crossover operation is implemented in two steps. First two indi-
vidual strings are selected at random from the mating pool gene-
rated by selection operator. Next a crossover site is selected at
random along the string length and the genes are swapped between
the strings following the crossover site. The new strings obtained
from crossover (offspring) are placed in the new population and
the process is continued. Although there are many forms of cross-
over, including two-point crossover and uniform crossover, the
simple one-point crossover described above is used in this study.
In this study GA randomly picks two string sets from new popula-
tion to create one child by crossover with probability pc = 0.9.
Mutation
A mutation is an occasional random alteration of a gene. The
mutation operator is applied to the new string with a specified
Vol 87 , September 2006
mutation probability (pm ) to prevent premature convergence to the
local optima. When used sparingly with the reproduction and cross-
over operators, mutation serves to safeguard against a premature
loss of important genetic material at a particular position. For a
given parent X, if the element Xk of it is selected for mutation, the
resulting offspring is X’ = [Xl… X’k… Xn], where, X’k is a random
number in the range (0,1).
In this study probability of mutation (pm) is kept dynamic, ie, the pm
is varied from generation to generation in the range of 0.5-0.01.
The large value of pm transform the GA into a pure random search
initially while the small value of pm at later stage avoids conver-
gence to local optimum and also avoids disruption of near optimal
solution12. The probability of mutation (pm) at any generation ‘t ’
can be expressed as
pm = 0.5 − (0.5 × t / t max ) (4)
where tmax= maximum number of generations.
GA FORMULATION
GA basically finds the maximum of unconstrained problem.
To solve constrained minimization problem, two transformations
have to be made. The first transformation transforms the original
constrained problem into an unconstrained problem, using the
concept of penalty function, ie, constraint violations are included
in the composite objective function as penalties. Penalty techniques
transform the constrained problem into unconstrained problem
by penalizing the infeasible solutions. In general there are two
variations of penalty technique that includes constant penalty and
variable penalty. Variable penalty approach has been used in this
study due less effectiveness of constant penalty for complex prob-
lem13. The fitness function is a blend of objective and constraint
function as given in equation.
ϕ ( x ) = f ( x ) (1.0 + µ ( x ) ) (5)
where the penalty multiplier µ(x) that penalizes an infeasible string
is given by linear function
m
µ(x ) = ∑ w jv j (6)
j =1
where the constraint violation is measured by
v j = max  0, g x ) −bm  (7)
 m(
where gm (x) = mth inequality constraint; bm = bound on constraint
and wj = penalty weight.
The penalty weight at tth generation is calculated as given by13
w j = log (1 + t ) (8)
The second transformation accomplishes the minimization of
objective function ϕ (x) through the maximization of fitness
function, F (x), defined as
F ( x ) = 1/ ϕ ( x ) (9)
5
The use of GA-based method assures the explicit bound constraints Table 4 Result of minimum, maximum, average and standard of various
(Table 1) are satisfied throughout the optimization procedure. The parameters from 30 GA run
optimization problem essentially reduces to incorporation of Parameter Minimum Maximum Average Standard
implicit constraints in the objective function, which constitute the GR 700 700 700 0
constrained optimization problem.
TR 20 20 20 0
ILLUSTRATION AND DISCUSSION GS 23.550 23.525 19.41467 ± 2.409917
TS 850.20 1501.80 1059.22 ± 143.6804
The GA based algorithm is applied and illustrated for a
SOR 1.5784 1.5994 1.594467 ± 0.004818
50000 m3/day conventional water treatment plant treating raw water
with average suspended solid concentration of 200 mg/l. To FR 7.1592 7.1976 7.18544 ± 0.010413
validate the results value of objective function (annual cost) is H 0.2532 1.8676 0.969397 ± 0.387582
estimated with GA based and DP based optimal design procedure. SSefil 0.322 1.9991 1.200627 ± 0.445286
Cost, $ 627036 631591 628542 ± 1112.870
The GA software is developed and implemented in ‘C’ program-
ming language and the program is run on Pentium-IV processor. parameters obtained form 30 independent trials along with
For implementing the real coded genetic algorithm, population size standard deviation. The difference in Avg, Min and Max cost
of 50 was taken and maximum number of generation was taken as obtained is marginal. Furthermore, the GA solves the problem of
500. The Roulette wheel type selection technique was employed. ‘curse of dimensionality’. The computational time required is
Simple one-point crossover and mutation operators were used in almost one-tenth but more importantly the storage space required
this study. The probability of crossover was kept 0.9. The prob- is very-very less than that required by DP based procedure. Table 5
ability of mutation is kept dynamic, ie, the mutation probability shows the results for ± 20% change in plant design flow (Q) and
changes from generation to generation with minimum mutation raw water concentration (SS) over the base value of 50000 m3/day
probability of 0.01. According to GA terminology, the search is and 200 mg/l. GA accurately finds the near-optimal solution.
for a chromosome that minimizes the objective function along with
satisfying all design and effluent quality constraints. Thus each Additionally since GA is a random search process the information
chromosome consists of six elements (genes), representing six provided by GA population can be used to learn more about model
decision variables (GR, TR, GS, TS, SOR, FR) respectively. Individual sensitivity. The coefficient of correlation between various design
genes are coded as floating point numbers. and performance parameters can be obtained from potential solu-
tions generated during successive GA generations. The coefficients
Table 3 depicts the results of optimal design and operating para- of correlation obtained between various parameters, from popula-
meters obtained by five independent GA runs and DP based tion generated during successive generations, are as shown in Table 6.
optimal design procedure for a design flow of 50000 m3/day and The performance parameter SSesed and SSefil are linearly corre-
suspended solid concentration 200 mg/l. No constraint violation lated to velocity gradient (GS) in the flocculation unit as it decides
is observed in any independent GA run. The results obtained by
GA and DP is very close. The difference in annual cost obtained Table 5 Results of sensitivity analysis using GA and DP
by DP and GA is less than 0.5%. The optimal design parameters Parameter Design Suspended Solid
obtained by GA are very close to those obtained by DP. Results Flow Concentration
demonstrate the capability of GA to accurately find near-optimal
solution of water treatment plant design problem. Table 4 shows Q=40000 Q=60000 SS=160.0 SS=240.0
SS=200 SS=200 Q=50000 Q=50000
minimum (Min), maximum (Max) and average (Avg) of various
GR 700.0(700.0)* 700.0(700.0) 700.0(700.0) 700.0(700.0)
Table 3 Results of optimal design parameters obtained from five indepen-
dent GA runs and DP TR 20.0(20.0) 20.0(20.0) 20.0(20.0) 20.0(20.0)
GS 21.53(22.0) 21.815(22.0) 22.43(22.0) 20.96(21.0)
Parameter GA Based Solution DP Based Solution
Run1 Run2 Run3 Run4 Run5 TS 947.4(910.0) 918.6(910.0) 857.4(910.0) 958.2(955.0)

GR 700.0 700.0 700.0 700.0 700.0 700.0 SOR 1.5976(1.6) 1.5958(1.6) 1.5874(1.6) 1.5988(1.6)
TR 20.0 20.0 20.0 20.0 20.0 20.0 FR 7.188(7.2) 7.1808(7.2) 7.1856(7.2) 7.1856(7.2)
GS 23.525 22.575 20.39 21.435 21.815 22.0 Cost 544443.0 714000.0 631998.0 631837.0
TS 850.20 891.60 988.80 938.40 934.80 910.0 (539049.0) (707740.0) (630894.0) (630894.0)
SOR 1.5918 1.5946 1.5970 1.5988 1.5952 1.600 * Values in parenthesis corresponds to solution found by DP based procedure

FR 7.1976 7.1712 7.1760 7.1592 7.1976 7.200

Cost 629250 627759 627976 628249 627036 626287 Table 6 Results of correlation coefficient obtained from GA population

Frun 48 48 48 48 48 48 Coefficient of Correlation

H 1.57 1.491 1.082 1.271 1.347 1.453
GR and TR and GS and GS and SOR and FR and SSesed and
SSefil 1.993 1.893 1.373 1.614 1.710 1.789 SSesed SSesed SSesed SSefil SSesed SSefil SSefil
CPU Time, s 8 8 8 8 8 86 0.0465 0.0401 0.9733 0.809 0.0204 – 0.011 0.833

6 IE(I) Journal−EN
the size of floc produced in the flocculation, which affects their
removal in sedimentation tank and consequently influent to filter unit.
CONCLUSION
The genetic algorithm has been potentially investigated for its
application to integrated water treatment plant design. Experiment
with a case study was performed to demonstrate the GAs ability to
obtain optimal design parameter with multiple constraints. The
penalty function method is employed to handle the multiple con-
straints. Following the case study experiment, this study demon-
strates the capability of GA to accurately find the optimal solution
of WTP design problem. The method requires less computational
time and storage space as against DP. Furthermore, the GA popu-
lation can be used to learn more about the model sensitivity. Thus,
GA has been demonstrated to be quite promising as a useful opti-
mization tool in environmental modelling.
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