(342r) Resilience in Water-Energy Nexus | AIChE

(342r) Resilience in Water-Energy Nexus

Authors 

Tsolas, S. D. - Presenter, Texas A&M University
Hasan, F., Texas A&M University
Modern world is supported by complex infrastructures, such as power grids and water distribution networks. Poor maintenance errors and/or catastrophic events can disrupt their connectivity. These disruptions can propagate and affect the entire network’s performance leading to power outages and water shortages. In addition, these networks are highly interdependent, constituting what is known as the Water-Energy Nexus (WEN) [1,2]. Energy generation requires water. Similarly, water treatment and distribution require energy. This poses additional challenges as disruptions in one network also affect the performance of the other. Therefore, it is crucial to design resilient regional water-energy networks that can withstand disruptions in their connectivity and capacity reductions, and still manage to satisfy the end-use energy and water demands. Past works have addressed the effects of network topology on the performance under node or connectivity disruptions [3,4]. However, accounting for network resilience in the design phase is still a challenge. We explore network resilience by checking the feasibility of a given network after the removal of a single node or connection. The fraction of the connections and nodes that can be removed individually, while still maintaining network feasibility indicates the network resilience. We formulate an MILP model for the design of cost-effective water-energy nexus that also accounts for plausible disruption scenarios in two interconnected supply chains. The two networks are ensured to be feasible for all scenarios by selecting the capacities and connectivity in such a way that there are sufficient provisions for rerouting the flows in the event of a disruption. This is done by expanding the operating variables and flow balances over the set of all disruption scenarios. Effective solution strategies based on Monte Carlo sampling of the disruption scenarios are applied to handle the large-scale instances.

References:

[1] Garcia, D. J., & You, F. (2016). The water-energy-food nexus and process systems engineering: a new focus. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 91, 49-67.

[2] Tsolas, S. D., Karim, M. N., & Hasan, M. M. F. (2018). Optimization of water-energy nexus: A network representation-based graphical approach. Applied energy, 224, 230-250.

[3] Albert, R., Albert, I., & Nakarado, G. L. (2004). Structural vulnerability of the North American power grid. Physical review E, 69(2), 025103.

[4] Yazdani, A., & Jeffrey, P. (2011). Complex network analysis of water distribution systems. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 21(1), 016111.

[5] Tsolas, S. D., Karim, M. N., & Hasan, M. M. F. (2018). Systematic Design, Analysis and Optimization of Water-Energy Nexus. Foundations of Computer-Aided Process Design 2019, Paper ID 101