Abstract
The issues of freshwater scarcity in arid and semi-arid areas could be reduced via treated municipal wastewater effluent (TMWE). Artificial intelligence methods, especially the fuzzy inference system, have proven their ability in TMWE quality evaluation in complex and uncertain systems. The primary aim of this study was to use a Mamdani fuzzy inference system to present an index for agricultural application based on the Iranian water quality index (IWQI). Since the uncertainties were disregarded in the conventional IWQI, the present study improved this procedure by using fuzzy logic and then the fuzzy effluent quality index (FEQI) was proposed as a hybrid fuzzy-based index. TMWE samples of the Gheitarie wastewater treatment plant in Tehran city recorded from 2011 to 2017 were taken into consideration for testing the ability of the proposed index. The results of the FEQI showed samples categorized as ‘Excellent’ (21), ‘Good’ (10), ‘Fair’ (4), and ‘Marginal’ (1) for the warm seasons, and for the cool seasons, the samples categorized as ‘Excellent’, ‘Good’ and ‘Fair’ were 17, 18 and 1, respectively. Generally, a comparison between the IWQI and proposed model results revealed the FEQI's superiority in TMWE quality assessment.
Management Options Supporting a Dual Discharge Strategy for a Major Municipal Wastewater Effluent
