RAIN MODEL FOR INVESTIGATING OVERFLOW IN COMBINED SEWER SYSTEMS UNDER REGULAR OPERATING CONDITIONS

In combined sewer systems, even regularly occurring heavy rainfall can cause overflows to occur under regular operating conditions. These overflows result in a mixture of rainfall and raw wastewater being transported to the receiving water body. Though hydraulic models provide a means for calculating the amount of overflow resulting from a given rain event, correct estimations for the annual amount of pollution can only be made after processing multiple year’s worth of rain event data. In order to reduce the time needed to complete the numerical simulations, a method is proposed for correctly modeling the overflow of a long series of historical rainfall data, using a reduced input dataset. Based on rainfall intensity measurements, a series of rain events was divided into block rains. The complete series of block rains was then replaced with 9 representative (weighted) block rains, each of equal rainfall. The method was tested on the hydraulic model of a 7500 ha catchment of the Budapest combined sewer system. When compared to overflow results attained by processing 3 years worth of rainfall data, sampled in 10 minute intervals, the overflow results of the 9 element numerical model deviated by less than 12%. The time necessary to complete the hydraulic simulations of the latter was 1/27th of the former. These faster numerical models will enable designers to search for optimal technological solutions from both an environmental as well as economic point of view.