This paper presents a novel systematic decomposition method for the synthesis of water network. The main objective of this approach is to reduce the complexity of the water network by dividing the system into several clusters with optimisation constraints. These constraints include lengths of pipeline, total pipe lengths of the clusters, etc. The method was applied to both direct reuse/recycle and water regeneration networks. A literature example is used to demonstrate the novel approach. The generated network alternatives were compared for their minimum fresh water and wastewater flowrates, piping costs, as well as the number of pipelines. It is observed that the number of pipelines and the piping costs decrease when the system is divided into more clusters (i.e. simpler network). The results also show that when the complexity of the network decreases, higher fresh water is observed for the direct reuse/recycle case, and higher regenerated flowrate for the case of water regeneration network. Both cases lead to higher operating and total annualised cost of the water networks. Hence, there is a trade-off between network complexity and water flowrates. It is up to the plant engineers or designers to decide the level of complexity and water saving that they can accept.

本文提出了一种新的系统分解方法，用于水网络的综合。这种方法的主要目的是通过将系统分为具有优化约束的几个群集来降低水网络的复杂性。这些限制条件包括管道的长度，群集的总管道长度等。该方法同时应用于直接回用/再循环和水再生网络。一个文学例子被用来证明这种新颖的方法。对生成的网络替代方案的最低淡水和废水流量，管道成本以及管道数量进行了比较。可以看出，将系统划分为更多的群集（即，更简单的网络）后，管道的数量和管道成本会降低。结果还表明，当网络的复杂性降低时，对于直接回用/再循环情况，观察到较高的淡水，对于水再生网络，则观察到较高的再生流量。两种情况都会导致供水网络的运营成本和年化总成本增加。因此，需要在网络复杂度和水流量之间进行权衡。由工厂工程师或设计师决定他们可以接受的复杂程度和节水程度。