Title: MUSIC for cost optimisation of stormwater treatment systems

Authors: Monzur A. Imteaz; Amimul Ahsan

Addresses: Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC 3122, Australia ' Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract: A model of urban stormwater improvement conceptualisation (MUSIC) developed and widely used in Australia, estimates pollutant transport from catchments and stormwater treatment through different systems. MUSIC also provides life-cycle costing estimates for different treatment systems. Following a series of tests for several stormwater treatment systems' efficiencies around the world, MUSIC was further tested for a grass swale system in Taiwan. The tested model was then used for the cost optimisation of three different types of treatment systems: grass swale, bio-retention system and porous pavement. For each treatment system, cost verses expected pollutant removal efficiency curves are presented for the treatments of total suspended solids (TSS), total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN). Eventually, different systems were compared in regards to costs in achieving the same removal efficiency. It is found that within lower cost range, bioretention system will provide highest removal efficiency for all the three pollutants considered in this study.

Keywords: total suspended solids; TSS; total nitrogen; TN; total phosphorus; TP; bioretention; grass swale; porous pavements; cost optimisation; urban stormwater treatment; Australia; water pollution; pollutant transport; life-cycle costing; LCC; Taiwan; pollutant removal; removal efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJW.2015.070362

International Journal of Water, 2015 Vol.9 No.3, pp.302 - 314

Received: 08 Nov 2013
Accepted: 06 Jan 2014
Published online: 03 Jul 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article