Improve leakage management to reach sustainable water supply networks through by green energy systems. Optimized case study

Abstract

[EN] The cities and townships should increase their sustainability to achieve the different targets, which are included in the sustainable development goals. The water distribution networks are present in urban areas. It implies the improvement of their management is key to reaching this sustainability. The water managers use different strategies to reach sustainable values in their facilities, searching for the reduction of the leakage volume. The proposed research develops a new methodology, which enables the self-calibration of leaks in water supply, knowing the injected flow and the consumed volume in the water networks. Besides, the proposed tool enabled the incorporation of the recovery systems to improve the energy efficiency of the network, increasing the use of renewable energies and reducing the leakages volume. These improvements affect positively the hydraulic ef-ficiency of the system, and therefore, it improves the use of the water resources of the cities and reduces the cost for the citizens. The methodology was applied to a real case study located in Manta (Ecuador). The proposed procedure, which is optimized by two simulated annealing procedures inserted in an iterative procedure enables the decreased volume of the leakages above 120000 m(3 )and increased the annual generated renewable energy by 34490 kWh, decreasing the emission of 969 tCO(2) each year.