Simultaneous design of water reusing and rainwater harvesting systems in a residential complex

This paper introduces an optimization formulation to design residential water systems that satisfy the water demands in a housing complex involving rainwater harvesting, storage and distribution as well as the simultaneous design of water networks for recycling, reusing, regenerating and storing reclaimed water. The design task is considered as a multi-objective optimization problem where one objective is the minimization of the fresh water consumption and the other objective is the minimization of the total annual cost. The proposed model accounts for the variability in the water demands through the different hours of the day and for the different seasons of the year. The seasonal dependence of the rainwater has also been considered in the optimization model. A case study for the city of Morelia in Mexico is presented. The results show that significant reductions can be obtained in the total fresh water consumption and in the total cost.