Thesis (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2020

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Water Engineering and Management

Urban water systems (UWSs) are energy-intensive worldwide, particularly for drinking-water pumping and aeration in wastewater treatment. Usual approaches to improve energy efficiency focus only on equipment and disregard the UWS as a continuum of stages from source-to-tap- to-source (abstractionitransport-treatment--drinking water transportJdistribution- wastewater and storm water collectionitransport-treatment--discharge/reuse). We try to develop a framework for a comprehensive assessment of UWS energy efficiency and a three- level approach to enforce it: overall UWS, stage, infrastructure component. The framework is structured by efficiency and effectiveness criteria (an efficient but ineffective infrastructure is useless), earlier and newly developed performance indicators and reference values. The framework and the approach are the basis for a sound diagnosis and intervention prioritizing and are being tested in a peer-to-peer innovation project involving 10 water utilities. Results of levels 1-3 of analysis herein illustrated for a water utility demonstrate the framework and approach potential to assess UWS effectiveness and energy efficiency, and to select the stages and infrastructures for improvement and deeper diagnosis. A comprehensive water-energy- carbon (WEe) nexus model for an urban water system (UWS) using system dynamics is proposed to assist municipalities, urban developers, and policymakers for neighborhood water planning and management. The proposed model and decision support tool were developed for the operational phase of UWSs. The model was validated using historical water and energy consumption data (2002-2019) for water treatment plant and (2010-2019) wastewater treatment plant of Penticton in the Bangkok metropolitan area. The intervention analysis reveals significant differences in savings in water, energy, and carbon for various water and energy-based interventions in UWSs and the developed tool is well capable for analyzing these savmgs.