Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/701016
16 WET NEWS JULY 2016 The existing water distribution network in the Região dos Lagos region operated at a 45% water-loss rate ONSITE HYdRaULic modeLLing P rolagos, a subsidiary of Aegea Group, is responsible for providing water and sewerage services to five municipalities in Região dos Lagos, Rio de Janeiro. Prolagos manages a total water network encompassing 2,000km of distribution pipelines and accommodates for variable seasonal fluctuations ranging from 400,000 to almost two million inhabitants at the peak of the tourist season. The region also lacks fresh water resources as all the surrounding lakes contain hypersaline water, which is unfit for human consumption. Water is distributed from a spring 70km away, and four pump stations were required to provide water to the inhabitants, but the current system had not been performing optimally. Prolagos undertook a major program, called the Water Master Plan 2041, to expand the water supply system with short-term and long-term goals for a more sustainable future. To implement this project, Prolagos used Bentley's WaterGEMS to create, compare, and optioneer more than 50 hydraulic modelling scenarios, reduce energy consumption and non-revenue water, calibrate the network model, and enable collaborative decision-making for the new water distribution system. Tourist season The existing water distribution network in the Região dos Lagos region consumed BRL26M (£5.2M) in energy annually and operated at a 45% water-loss rate. The system supplied 91% of the resident population and needed to meet demands five times greater during tourist season, with supply sources more than 50km away. "Região dos Lagos is a tropical paradise without freshwater resources," says Prolagos senior project manager Wagner Carvalho. "It is a huge challenge to collect water in another province, so we need to invest a lot in infrastructure. At the same time, we have high energy costs to keep the system working." In addition to the lack of resources, fluctuating demands throughout the seasons, and financial implications of the project, Prolagos also faced integrating enormous amounts of data from different systems, devices, sensors, and instruments within the water network. In order to be more efficient and to provide a decision support tool for the different what-if scenarios, the project team needed to utilise an inter-operable platform to manage the multitude of document formats and the huge volume of data. Using WaterGEMS, Prolagos implemented a systematic approach to combining asset, customer, and operational information from various sources in the water network into a collaborative, calibrated hydraulic modelling environment. To make coordinated decisions about the designs for the supply and distribution system, the Prolagos team relied on WaterGEMS to create precise, hydraulic modelling to reduce energy consumption related to pumping costs. Behaviour Integrating the calibrated hydraulic models with a geographic information system (GIS) and a supervisory control WaterGEMS of a master plan • When Brazilian company Prolagos decided to put its water master plan into action it turned to hydraulic modelling to find the best scenario. projEcT SpEcS • expand the water supply network for Região dos Lagos • calibrate the hydraulic network model • Reduce energy consumption and non-revenue water • accommodate increased water demand during high tourist season and data acquisition (SCADA) system made it possible to improve the operational efficiency of the intake system by using real-time data and historical data, as well as the relevant geo-coordination. The project team used the hydraulic network models to simulate the behaviour of existing and planned systems under a wide range of conditions. WaterGEMS provided a visual, collaborative solution utilised by all stakeholders, and enabled the team to evaluate numerous, what-if scenarios for better decision making for optimal network performance. "WaterGEMS is beneficial because it allows us to simulate and choose the best scenario. We were able to integrate our system and create a virtual model with unrivalled visualisation utilised by all stakeholders to engage and approve this project in record time," says Carvalho. Furthermore, the team could precisely simulate the effects of the expansion alternatives to meet the future demands of the Water Master Plan 2041 fostering regional development and improved