Development of the optimal pressure control management strategy for reducing water losses in drinking water distribution systems

Due to climate change, drought and a rapidly increasing world population, the amount of clean water per capita is gradually decreasing. Due to the limited availability of new water resources, the importance of reducing losses in networks increases. A significant portion of the physical losses occurring in networks are caused by leaks. Leaks are directly related to pressure, and most public institutions and researchers carry out management studies on the pressure parameter. Pressure management methods are classified as classical and advanced pressure management. With many studies conducted around the world, operating pressure has been minimized. In this study, hourly pressure difference was chosen as the parameter to be minimized during the pressure management study and it was aimed to minimize the pressure surge of the network during the day. The data of the working networks, whose hydraulic models were created in the EPANET program, were transferred to the MATLAB environment with the EPANET-MATLAB Toolkit. First, the network was analyzed with classical pressure management. In the next stage, the operating scenario for flow-sensitive forward pressure management began to be created. Genetic algorithm was used in MATLAB environment to create the most suitable scenario. Inlet pressure was chosen as the optimization variable. The sum of the hourly pressure change differences of the network during the day was chosen as the objective function. As a result of the optimization, the average pressure surges in Study Area I were reduced by 55% from 18.56 m to 8.41 m. In addition, the average pressure of the water network was reduced from 48.2 m to 37.3 m. In study area II, the average pressure surge decreased by 37% from 10.12 m to 6.42 m. Average operating pressures were reduced from 50.12 m to 48.17 m. Keywords: Pressure Management, Pressure Surge, Optimization, EPANET-MATLAB