Variable costs of operating
wastewater treatment plants
by Y. Smeers*, PhD, and D. Tytecat†, PhD
In this paper, variable operation of the plant is studied
through a model previously developed for simulating
steady-states and optimising the total design cost of a treat-
ment plant. In particular, various possible designs of a planti
are considered; for each of them, a set of steady-state values
for the effluent quality level, compatible with the initial
design, are simulated and the total variable operating costs
are optimised. In this way the dependence of the variable
operating costs on both the design and operating efflzrenti
quality levels can be analysed.
’1 Introduction
Cost functions of wastewater
treatment plants have been
used extensively in the past for planning purposes. In
Deininger (1965)-see also Ecker (1975), Loucks et al
(1967) or Sat~el ( i 965) for other instances of the same type
of problem - a model has been set up which selects the
BOD removal rates in various treatment plants located
along a river so as to achieve a certain quality of the stream
at minimal cost. Essential among the inputs of this model
are the functions giving the cost of treatment plants of
fixed design flow for various BOD removal rates. A different
problem is considered in Deininger (1972): its aim is to find
the treatment and conveyance system of minimal cost for a
region where the discharges of wastewater at the various
sewer end points are knawn. In this case, the main input of
the model consists of functions giving the cost of waste-
water treatment plants of given efficiency but of varying
size. Functions of this type have been discussed and
calibrated extensively in the literature.
Significant improvements have been achieved in water
quality since these functions were first proposed: treatment
plants have been built which have led to improvements of
the average water quality of many rivers. As a consequence,
the’pollution problem has evolved and is now of a different
nature. In Beck (I9~1~ it is argued that this new situation
can be roughly characterised by the following features: (1)
easy degradable loads have been mostly eliminated and only
the more difficult pollution remains; (2) standards are
becoming stiffer: in addition to the usual concern about the
average quality of the stream, increasing attention is devoted
to the probability of violation of these criteria; (3) new
investments will have to be decided, taking into account the
existing treatment capacity and, if necessary, the role of
existing plants will have to be changed; (4) finally, increased
emphasis will be placed on operations and maintenance
activities as a consequence, in particular, of raising energy
costs.
As a consequence of this trend, planning activities can
also be expected to evolve, and hence more elaborate cost
information will be required in the future. In particular,
*Centre for Operations Research and Econometrics, Voie du
Roman Pays, †Département des Affaires Publiques et Internationales,
Place Montesquieu, Université Catholique de Louvain, B-1348
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Downloaded from tim.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 1, 2015
more emphasis on standard compliance reliability will
require additional capacities that will only be operated a
fraction of the year; similarly, planning new capacities
taking into account existing plants may imply changing the
role of the equipments and hence possibly operating them
on a discontinuous basis. Finally, the increased emphasis on
operating costs should induce the plant manager to maintain
the operation of the different units to the minimal level
compatible with standard compliance.
These features are by no means exceptional: they have
been encountered in other sectors where operations of the
plants, because of their importance, are maintained as much
as possible at the lowest level compatible with the satisfac-
tion of the service expected. Planning for such possibilities
demands much more cost information than what is usually
available: in particular, variable operating costs must be
identified very much in the same spirit as with other
industrial plants. More specifically, one needs to know how
much can be saved by operating a plant at a smaller level
than its design capacity. This obviously assumes that variable
operation of the plant is indeed possible and there is some
argument that the plant can indeed be monitored on a
short-time basis provided that it has been designed accor-
dingly. Even when this is not the case, seasonal variations of
the plant can probably be considered with corresponding
cost savings. It is the purpose of this paper to provide an
approach to obtain that new type of cost information.
The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 gives an
outline of the treatment plant model used. Section 3 shows.
how this model was exploited to analyse the effect of
varying the operating effluent quality level on the variable
operating costs of the plant, and cost functions summarising
this analysis are computed. In Section 4 the use of these
cost functions in water quality management is briefly
discussed.
2 The model
2.1 Previous use
A complete mathematical model describing the various
hydraulic, biological and physicochemical processes
occurring in wastewater treatment has been developed for
the plant depicted in Fig. 1. The model has been thoroughly
set up and reported in previous references (Smeers and
Tyteca, 1984; Tytecs, I 979 and 98 1 b; Tyteca and Smeers,
1981; Tyteca et al, l9? 7~, Therefore only the main aspects
will be briefly recalled herein.
Table 1 gives the principal notations used in the model,
while Table 2 mentions some of the most important process
parameters needed to describe adequately the efficiency of
treatment units.
A first type of mathematical relationships expresses the
flow and mass balances: at each point of the plant where no
material transformation occurs through biological activity,
flows and masses entering must equal those leaving. A
second category includes relationships describing the
173
 Fig 1 Outline of a typical wastewater
treatment plant

TABLE 1: Notations The goal was then to obtain the lowest value for the total
discounted cost, which consists of the capital cost plus a
weighted sum, over a given period of the annual operation
and maintenance costs (Smeers and Tyteca, 1984; Tyteca,

TABLE 3: Process unit relationship

TABLE 2: Process parameters (see notations in TABi,E 1 ~

physicochemical and biological phenomena occurring in

each treatment process, through which wastewater is
progressively cleaned, and the organic and suspended
poHutant load is fmaiiy transformed into sludge. Table 3
shows the principal process unit relationships used in the
model.
The model finally includes process cost functions, which
-describe the total capital or operation and maintenance
costs C of a given unit, as a function of one or some of its
main design parameters X. Their general expression is

C=a Xb ...(19)
In previous work the model was used to seek the optimal
design of the plant depicted in Fig 1. A steady-state, corres-
ponding to the design capacity of the plant, was assumed.
174

Downloaded from tim.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 1, 2015

 1979 and 1981b; Tyteca et al, 1977). The optimisation
method is based on rewriting the model as a geometric
program, which is then solved using the generalised reduced
gradient (GRG) method.
2.2 Use of the model in studying variable operating costs
In the present study the treatment plant is considered to
be built, and the emphasis is on optimising the variable
operating costs of the plant over a given period. Accordingly,
changes have to be made in the model, by considering some
design variables as fixed, and allowing others to be re-
adjusted to a steady-state different from the design capacity
steady-state. The optimisation method is the same as
previously. Only changes in the model relationships are
considered hereafter.
Once the optimal size of treatment units has been
computed for a given design capacity, 10 design variables
are fixed: the areas of the primary and final settlers, the
thickener and the vacuum filter, the volumes of the aerator
and the digester, the capacity of the air blowers in the
aerator, and the capacity of three recycle and lift pumps.
When attempting subsequently to optimise the variable
operating costs, these variables are simply replaced by their
design values in each constraint of the model where they
appear.
The model initially has 26 equality constraints and 33
variables, and therefore seven degrees of freedom. For this
reason, attempting to fix the value of 10 variables would
lead to hinder the solution of the model for different
steady-states. Four of these variables, however, only reflect
maximum capacity values, namely, the capacities of the
blower and the pumps. Therefore these variables can be re-
adjusted in operating the plant, to any level below their
maximum-design values. Thus only six variables are fixed
(areas and volumes), leaving one degree of freedom to the
model.
The most significant change in the model affects the
objective function, that is, the total cost to be minimised.
For our purpose, the total costs of the plant have to be split
into three categories - the capital costs, the fixed operating
costs, and the variable operating costs. While the distinction
between the first category and the two others is clear, the
splitting of the latter needs some explanation. The fixed
operating costs include normal maintenance and repair
~
costs, including material and supply, which are a function
of the size of the treatment units. The variable operating
costs originate from expenses directly depending on the
rate at which the units are operated. They include wages for
operating labour, and, more importantly, energy and
chemical costs.
TABLE 4: Summary of variable operating costs
*wop *
hourly wage for operating labour
t Chemical costs
Downloaded from tim.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 1, 2015
The study of Patterson and Banker (1971), used in the
present model allows one to distinguish between fixed and
variableoperating costs for most units. The wages due to
operating labour for the settlers and the digester are given
as functions of the areas and volume of these units, res-
pectively. Therefore these costs must be taken as fixed in
the model. Table 4 gives a summary of variable operating
costs for the other treatment units considered in this study.
3 Variable operating cost functions
The model described in Section 2 was used repeatedly to
generate cost functions, giving the variable operating costs
of a previously designed treatment plant, as a function of
both’the design effluent quality level and the effective
quality level of the effluent during operation. For this sake,
the model is first run in its initial version for a set of
possible values of the effluent organic pollutant load
concentration, yielding the optimal plant design and total
discounted cost for each of these values. The influent
parameters are considered as fixed and taken in this example
as: flow rate = 600 m3/h, biodegradable dissolved load
concentration = 500 mg/1 COD, biodegradable suspended
load concentration =300 mg/1 suspended solids, non-
degradable suspended load concentration =200 mg/1 SS.
The costs are minimised over a period of 20 years and the
interest rate is taken as 8.6%.
In a second step, for each of the design effluent quality
levels, the model is used in its second version (giving the
optimal annual variable operating costs) by considering the
design of each unit as fixed, and varying the required
effluent quality level.
A first result of these studies is that only plants designed
for high-quality levels are able to operate at high-quality
levels (the influent parameters being unchanged). Indeed,
attempting to optimise the variable operating costs for a
quality level higher than the design quality level, resulted in
unfeasible solutions for the model, corresponding to
unfeasible operating conditions. As a consequence, if a
plant is to operate at a given quality level during any period
of its lifespan, it should be designed for that level at the
outset (unless the influent characteristics become less strin-
gent). Therefore, once a plant had been designed for a given
quality level by using the first version of the model, only
quality levels lower than or equal to that level could be
tested in the second version of the model.
Tables 5 and 6 give the results obtained for the sample
situation, in terms of the optimal total discounted costs
(Table 5) and the optimal annual variable operating costs
(Table 6). it can first be seen in Table that the variable
(S/h); Pc = cost of kWh (cents/kWh)
175
TABLE 5: Total cost, capital costs and variable operating costs c~f variable operating costs on the design and operating effluent
the optimal design in the sample situation, for nine effluent quality
levels
-
quality levels was tested in various different ways, of which
only the most significant are given in Table 7.
The power functions, Eqns (20) and (21), can be seen
to yield much less satisfactory results than linear regressions
on design and operating quality levels, their product and
their squares. Among these regressions, the most complete,
Eqn (23), gives the best R~ ; however, neglecting the less
significant term (L;ut, a)2 does not hamper the regression
TABLE 7: Regressions of optimal annual variable operating costs
($) v design and operating effluent quality levels (L~ut, d and
~-ciut, op, respectively, in ~ngll COD)
---

operating costs are a significant part of total discounted

cost, since they amount to about 35% of the total dis-
counted cost, and 67% of the total operating costs.
The figures in Table 6 refer to a one-year period. they
show what would be the cost of maintaining the operating
effluent quality level at the indicated value. They could be
used for any shorter period (week, month, season, by
dividing by 52, 12 or 4, respectively) during which a given
steady-state (constant influent parameters and effluent
quality level) is meaningful. The figures do not, of course,
reflect the costs incured to pass from one steady-state to
another; these can be considered as negligible provided that
the periods corresponding to the possible steady-states are
long enough (at least one week). A main assumption of the
model is, therefore, that the daily variations of the influent
characteristics are sufficiently smoothed by appropriate
equalisation basins.
It can be seen in Table 6 that, for a given operating
quality level, the design quality level has only low influence
on the operating costs. For example, operating a plant at
l (~~ mg/1 COD costs $139.53/year with a 5 mg/l COD-
designed plant, and ~ i. ~g.3~/ye~r with a l (30 mg/i COD
designed plant, or 6% more. The difference in total
discounted cost, however, is more important (from Table 5:
about 20%).
Costs functions were elaborated from the information
gathered in Table 6. Quantifying the dependence of the

TABLE 6: Optimal annual variable operating costs t’! 43 $/year) of a previously designed treatment plant
(sample situation)

176

Downloaded from tim.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 1, 2015

Fig 2 Variable operating costs of a treatment plant (sample situation)
(abscissa) and the design effluent quality level (curves)
Eqn (25). Maybe the best compromise between correct
description of the dependence and simplicity of the equation,
in view of the imprecisions which classically affect cost
data, would be Eqn (22).
Fig 2 gives an example of operating curves derived from
Eqn (25). These curves show, for a set of possible treatment
plant designs, the dependence of the variable operating
costs of the plant over a given period on the operating
effluent quality level.
The cost equations in Table 7 reflect only dependence
on the effluent quality level. Dependence on other factors,
mainly the influent characteristics, has been previously
studied by the authors, Smeers and Tyteca (1984); Tyteca
(1981a). An example of cost function giving the total
discounted cost (capital + operation and maintenance, in $,
of the plant as a function of the design influent polluting
load (3Z~ (in g/h influent biodegradable COD) and the
design effluent quality level Z~.d (in mg/l biodegradable
’
COD) is (Tyteca, 1981 a).
f’=<M&dquo;~<Of. ~.704~* ~) - 0.06 91 ... ~27)
4 Use of variable cost functions
In this section we provide a more formalised discussion
of the use of variable operating costs in the planning
process. As briefly indicated in the introduction, variable
operation of a treatment plant can sometimes be considered
if the unit is planned for reliability purposes or if it is
operated on a seasonal basis. This operation pattern can be
Downloaded from tim.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 1, 2015
as a function of the operating effluent quality level
explicitly included in planning models provided that
information on operation costs of treatment plants is
available. In order to clarify this point and motivate the use
of variable operating costs we shall briefly discuss how the
classical water-quality management problem can be extended
to take into account variable operation of the treatment
plants and the role played by cost functions such as
estabilished in relations ~20) - (26) in that approach.
Consider the following formulation of the classical
water-quality problem. Let
C(Q;Lin Lout)
be the total annual cost of a treatment plant of design flow
Q and raw water load .~;&dquo;. The decision variable for design
purposes is the load in the water flowing out of the plant
Lout. An example of the cost function C is the one obtained
in expression (27). Let I be a set of discharge points along a.
river and let (<?~/&euro;y} designate the set of How regimes
that can prevail m the basin during the year. To each flow
q one can associate a linear constraint set
~.’ ~~~ou~~ ~ ¡J ...
(28)
expressing the fact that the vector of discharges
(QLout) =
~~~~~t ~ i E Il ... (29)
will not result in violation of some water quality criteria in
the basin. Derivation of this constraint set can be found in
various works, Deiniger (1972) and Loucks et al (1967)
being classical examples of these. The classical river-quality
177
management problem can then be stated as
Mifl £ ~~ t~~3 ~in L§ut)
Lout I
s.t.
, - , -
~&dquo;(<2L~)<~’&dquo;
~~ ~ ~. ~~t ~ ~a Ie1
where j°° is a specified flow situation selected for design
purposes and expression (32) specifies constraints on the
attainable treatment levels.
Needless ta. say, such a formulation cannot take any
seasonal operation of the plants into account. A more
adequate approach to the problem would be as follows. Let
~lS~s ~jna L’t3ilk, G~I
be the annual fixed cost of a plant of design characteristics
(6,~’in~out d). We assume that the plant can be operated
at efficiencies lower than the maximal design values, and
designate by Lout, op the residual load during some operating
conditions. The water-quality management problem
represented by expressions (3t~~, ~3I) and (32) can naturally
be extended as
~in ~ ~~~ t~~, ~ in3 ~ outl ¢ ~ ~~
T out,d i < j
-&dquo;out,op
s.t.
X
C~((? ,Ltn.,I’out,d~6ut,op)}
’4~t,~~:~~t,~p) ~ bi jEJ
where
~’~~~-~in~ Z~ c~~ Z~ op) is one of the functions (20)-(26),
flj is the probability of flow ql, and
~out, op is the residual load in the water from plant i during
regime j.
This formulation of the problem is much more satis-
factory from an economic point of view in the sense that it
permits an adequate representation of treatment systems
which have low investment costs and high operating costs.
Examples of these are the artificial aeration of the stream
and chemical processes such as activated carbon, for which
operating costs can readily be derived.
Such an approach could thus lead to desigmng mi~ of
plants, each playing a specific role of base or peak treat-
ment. It obviously requires a hold on operating costs of
biological treatment plants such as derived in this paper.
5 Summary and conclusions
Cost analysis of ura.st~wa~t~r treatment plants has usually
dealt rnainiy with fixed costs. In this paper we argue that a
more refined analysis is necessary if some of the emerging
problems of water pollution control are to be adequately
dealt with. The proposed analysis is of a classical nature and
can be compared with the usual cost analysis done for other
industrial equipments; it distinguishes between fixed annual
costs and variable operating casts. It is argued, in particular,
that a knowledge of variable operating costs is compulsory
178
Downloaded from tim.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 1, 2015
if problems such as stiffer standard compliance reliability
and changing role of treatment plants have to be adequately
...
(30) taken into account. In order to derive this new cost infor-
mation, a comprehensive model of wastewater treatment
plant design is expanded to include operating decision
_
variables. Various designs of the treatment plant are selected
...(31) and various removal efficiencies considered. It is shown that
the model naturally leads to disaggregation of the total cost
...
(32) into investments, fixed operating costs and variable
operating costs. Similar models could doubtless be built for
different types of plants and used to derive similar infor-
mation.
6 Acknowledgements
This research was supported by grant FDS 1/3 from the
Catholic University of Louvain.
7 References
Beck, B. 1981.’Operational water quality management:
new perspectives’, Executive report of the Real-Time
Quality Management Project, forthcoming, IIASA,
Laxenburg (Austria).
Deminger, R. A. 1965. ’Water quality management: the
planning of economically optimal pollution control
systems’, Proceedings of the American Water Resources
...
(33) Association, Urbana, Illinois.
Deininger,
control
R. A. 1972. ’Minimum cost regional pollution
systems’, in International Symposium on Mathe-
matical Modelling Techniques in Water Resources
... (34) Systems (Biswas, A. K ed), Environment Canada, Ottawa,
Canada.
Ecker, J. G. 1975. ’A geometric programming model for
optimal allocation of stream-dissolved oxygen’, Manage-
ment Science, 21 (6), 658-668.
Loucks, D. G., Revelle, C. S. and Lynn, W. R. 1967. ’Linear
programming models for water pollution control’,
Management Science, 14, B166-B181.
Patterson, W. L. and Banker, R. F. 1971. ’Estimating costs
and manpower requirements for conventional wastewater
treatment facilities’, Black & Veatch Consulting
Engineers, US Environmental Protection Agency, Water
Pollution Control Research Series, 17090 DAN 10/71.
Smeers, Y. 1981. ’On the economics of time-varying river
quality control systems’, in Progress in Ecological Engi-
neering and Managementby Mathematical Modelling,
D. M. Dubois, ed., Editions Cebedoc, Li&egrave;ge (Belgium).
463-503.
Smeers, Y. and Tyteca, D. 1984. ’A geometric programming
model for the optimal design of wastewater treatment
plants’, Operations Research, 32, 314-342.
Sobel, M. J. 1965. ’Water quality improvement programming
problems’, Water Resources Research,1(4).
Tyteca, D. 1979. ’Mod&eacute;lisation et optimisation &eacute;conomique
des stations d’&eacute;puration d’eux r&eacute;siduaires’, th&egrave;se
pr&eacute;sent&eacute;e en vue de l’obtention du grade de docteur en
Sciences naturelles appliqu&eacute;es, Universit&eacute; Catholique de
Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve.
Tyteca, D. 1981a. ’Sensitivity analyses of the optimal design
of a municipal waste-water treatment plant’, in Progress
in Ecological Engineering and Management by Mathe-
matical Modelling, D. M. Dubois, ed., Editions Cebedoc,
Li&egrave;ge (Belgium), 743-766.
Tyteca, D. 1981b. ’Nonlinear programming model of
wastewater treatment plant’, Journal of the Environ-
mental Engineering Division, Proceedings of the
American Society of Civil Engineers, 107,747-766.
Tyteca, D. and Smeers, Y. 1981. ’Nonlinear programming
design of wastewater treatment plant’, Journal of the
Nesearch, Development and Application Notes
A shorter of ~f=a~s~cii~n Paper
For various reasons, but particularly due to pres-
sure of work in industry, publication of an important
advance in the application of measurement and
control techniques is delayed or even prevented al-
together. This means that wider application may be
delayed; it also denies to the author recognition of his
work outside his immediate environment. Although,
in industry, there is not the same pressure to publish
-
in fact one might say the pressure is often in the
opposite direction - it must be for the general good
that as much as possible is published widely.
Bearing this in mind, the Institute is prepared to
publish in its Transactions what are described as
’Research, Development and Application Notes’. These
would be of, say, 2000-3000 words, and be inter-
mediate between an abstract and a full paper. They
would, of course, be refereed and the work described
would have to be normally publishable in the Trans-
lops rather m the journal ’Mieasvremer4t and
Downloaded from tim.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 1, 2015
Environmental Engineering Division, Proceedings of the
American Society of Civil Engineers, 107, 767-779.
Tyteca, D., Smeers, Y. and Nyns, E. J. 1977. ’Mathematical
modeling and economic optimisation of wastewater
treatment plants’, CRC Critical Reviews in Environ-
mental Control, 8, 1-89.
Control, but the degree of detail would necessarily
be less. The objective, the methods used and the
degree of success would have to be described, and
perhaps wider implications, the need for the work,
etc, outlined.
In addition to completed work, these notes could
be used to describe major landmarks in a long pro-
gramme of research or development. They could also
be used to describe minor developments of research
already reported in the Transactions or elsewhere.
It is bound to be beneficial to the author to have
his work brought quickly to the attention of his pro-
fession. It is equally important for the technical
excellence of any industrial R&D organisation to be
recognised outside the company within which it
operates. Cross fertilisation between R&D Groups
and individuals is a vital requirement for rapid
advances in technology. We hope readers will take
a~v~,~ ~~ of this facility.
179