Preliminary assessment of the influence of Salitre basin rainfall on the pumping operation of Salitre wastewater treatment plant (Bogotá)

Operations in wastewater treatment facilities often result in a more or less empirical practice depending on the acquired field experience of a reduced group of persons and how good the track of the different processes in the plant is in real time. This situation conducts to a great constraint of the treatment systems, limits the optimization process and obstacles economical efficiency regarding environmental objectives. This work consists in identifying hydrological stations near the Salitre basin (Bogota, Colombia), and associated to them, the most influent variables on the Salitre Waste Water Treatment Plant (Salitre WWTP), as basis of a possible implementation of a real-time operating system. To achieve this objective, correlations (Pearson and Spearman) as well as Partial Least Squares Regressions (PLSR) were calculated between hydrological and pumping operational variables of the plant. The results indicate that the variables with the highest correlation to the pumping operation of Salitre WWTP are maximum precipitation registered in two hours and total time of rainfall events. Moreover, the hydrological stations with more influence are Camavieja, Salitre Casa de Bombas and Cerros de Suba.