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Title: Mass imbalances in EPANET water-quality simulations

Journal Article · · Drinking Water Engineering and Science
 [1];  [2];  [1]
  1. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
  2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, OH (United States)
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EPANET is widely employed to simulate water quality in water distribution systems. However, in general, the time-driven simulation approach used to determine concentrations of water-quality constituents provides accurate results only for short water-quality time steps. Overly long time steps can yield errors in concentration estimates and can result in situations in which constituent mass is not conserved. The use of a time step that is sufficiently short to avoid these problems may not always be feasible. The absence of EPANET errors or warnings does not ensure conservation of mass. This paper provides examples illustrating mass imbalances and explains how such imbalances can occur because of fundamental limitations in the water-quality routing algorithm used in EPANET. In general, these limitations cannot be overcome by the use of improved water-quality modeling practices. This paper also presents a preliminary event-driven approach that conserves mass with a water-quality time step that is as long as the hydraulic time step. Results obtained using the current approach converge, or tend to converge, toward those obtained using the preliminary event-driven approach as the water-quality time step decreases. Improving the water-quality routing algorithm used in EPANET could eliminate mass imbalances and related errors in estimated concentrations. Furthermore, the results presented in this paper should be of value to those who perform water-quality simulations using EPANET or use the results of such simulations, including utility managers and engineers.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Research and Development; USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1435949
Journal Information:
Drinking Water Engineering and Science, Vol. 11, Issue 1; ISSN 1996-9465
Publisher:
Copernicus PublicationsCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (14)

Propagation of Chlorine Demand Signals Induced by Microbial Contaminants in a Drinking Water Distribution System conference April 2012
An R package for reading EPANET files journal October 2016
Numerical Methods for Modeling Water Quality in Distribution Systems: A Comparison journal March 1996
Discrete Simulation Approach for Network-Water-Quality Models journal January 1995
A Framework for Estimating the Adverse Health Effects of Contamination Events in Water Distribution Systems and its Application: Framework for Estimating the Adverse Health Effects of Contamination Events journal September 2013
Global resilience analysis of water distribution systems journal December 2016
TEVA-SPOT-GUI - Containing Preliminary Flow Model dataset January 2017
EPANET INP files used in paper. dataset January 2017
Assessing Inhalation Exposures Associated with Contamination Events in Water Distribution Systems journal December 2016
Improving Efficiency of the Bayesian Approach to Water Distribution Contaminant Source Characterization with Support Vector Regression journal January 2014
Influence of Network Model Detail on Estimated Health Effects of Drinking Water Contamination Events journal January 2015
Virtual Cities for Water Distribution and Infrastructure System Research conference May 2007
An event-driven method for modelling contaminant propagation in water networks journal February 1994
The Battle of the Water Sensor Networks (BWSN): A Design Challenge for Engineers and Algorithms journal November 2008

Figures / Tables (28)

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Figure C3(p. 20)figure Figure C3
Figure C4(p. 20)figure Figure C4
Figure C5(p. 20)figure Figure C5
Table C1(p. 21)table Table C1

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