The synthesis of wastewater treatment systems refers to the specification of both a system structure–the choice and arrangement of unit processes and operations–and the design of the individual units within that structure so that a set of economic and environmental objectives is fulfilled. This paper shows that one can not yet develop optimal synthesis models due to limitations on cost and engineering data used as input in those models.

It is illustrated however that a rational synthesis modeling effort offers two important contributions: the development of an improved although still sub-optimal version of a wastewater treatment synthesis model; and the systematic identification of research areas to be followed if one wants to overcome the limitations above mentioned and thus enable the development of a model to guide a truly optimal design of wastewater treatment systems.

Municipal wastewater systems, combinatorial optimization, synthesis models, decomposition, economic data needs, engineering data needs
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