Challenge

Engineers at SUEZ design and build large wastewater, drinking water and desalination plants that rely on complex pipe networks, pumping stations and storage tanks. These systems must operate over highly variable inflow conditions, ranging from normal operation to short but critical peak flows during rainstorms.

Designing a water transfer system involves several strongly coupled and competing objectives:

• selecting pipe diameters and pump configurations that balance hydraulic performance, construction cost and energy consumption
• minimizing environmental impact and associated CO₂ emissions
• ensuring safe operation during transient events such as sudden power shutdowns
• tuning control strategies to avoid unstable operation, such as excessive pump start-stop cycles

The system must be optimized not only for peak flow conditions, but also for the long-term operational flow distribution over an entire year. Most of the operating time occurs at low and medium flow rates.

Solution

Alexandre Lecorneur and Pedro Fonseca of SUEZ described how coupling Wolfram System Modeler with Wolfram Language enables powerful optimization workflows at the 2026 System Modeler Conference.

To support early engineering decisions and reduce project risk, SUEZ uses Wolfram technology as a central system-level modeling environment to represent hydraulic networks, pumping stations and control architectures in a single executable model.

System Modeler is the core system simulation environment for modeling the complete water transfer architecture, including:

• incoming network flows
• tanks and reservoirs
• long and short pipeline sections
• pumping stations with variable-speed operation
• protection devices such as surge vessels
• the associated control architecture

At the early design stage, System Modeler is used to build a fast-running, parameterized hydraulic model in which pipe diameters and pump configurations are treated as design variables. Key performance indicators such as energy consumption (OPEX), construction cost (CAPEX) and CO₂ footprint are computed directly from the system model.

To perform large-scale design studies, the System Modeler model is coupled with Wolfram Language's numerical and optimization workflows. This integration allows the model to be executed thousands of times automatically, enabling multi-objective optimization of pipe diameters and system layouts.

Beyond steady-state and long-term performance, System Modeler is also used to simulate transient scenarios, such as a complete power shutdown of multiple pumps. Pump inertia, motor behavior and pipeline dynamics are included to assess the risk of sub-atmospheric pressures and pipe collapse and to evaluate mitigation measures such as surge vessels.

Finally, the same System Modeler model is extended with control logic to regulate tank levels and pump operation. Simulations covering up to 20 days of real inflow data run in less than a minute, identifying control instabilities and tuning controller parameters, which are further optimized automatically using Wolfram Language.

Benefits

By using System Modeler as a unified system-simulation backbone, SUEZ can:

• optimize pipe diameters and pump configurations based on total life-cycle cost and environmental impact
• rapidly compare alternative pump models and multi-pump operating strategies
• identify and mitigate hydraulic risks such as vacuum conditions after pump shutdown
• validate and tune control architectures before commissioning

The tight coupling between System Modeler and Wolfram Language enables automated, large-scale optimization and parameter studies, transforming system models into reusable engineering assets for both design and operational decision-making, while significantly reducing troubleshooting effort compared to onsite testing.