Flushing planner: a tool for planning and optimization of unidirectional flushing

Abstract

Unidirectional flushing is a technique for periodic cleaning of water supply pipes to remove deposits and may also be an important response to contamination of drinking water networks. For unidirectional flushing the defined flushing path is fed by clean water at an entrance point. The development of an efficient flushing strategy is not straight forward. The objective is to minimize the effort of operating staff. The flushing plan consists of a welldefined series of flushing actions in which the current flushing path is always connected to previously cleaned sections. The paper describes the software tool referred to as Flushing Planner.