Evolution of water-using networks with multiple contaminants

A systematic procedure is outlined in this paper to evolve a preliminary water-using network into a simpler one while incurring the lowest penalty in freshwater usage. The minimum interconnection number is first targeted on the basis of graph theory and then, three effective evolution strategies are applied to achieve this goal. The proposed procedure can be easily realized with the help of Microsoft Office Excel. An example is presented to illustrate the evolution procedure and demonstrate its effectiveness.