A theory of efficiency of storage-treatment systems

A simple expression is presented on the capability of storage-treatment systems to reduce non-point pollutant runoff load to natural waters. Their efficiency depends on the capacities of the facilities and probabilistic properties of runoff, such as interval, duration, volume, and concentration of runoff events. Assuming the compound Poisson process for runoff time series, the exact expressions of the ratio of treated load in terms of storage and treatment capacities are theoretically derived on the neighbourhoods of all boundaries of the domain on which the problem is defined. Then, an approximate expression over the whole domain is presented, of which the value and the first-order derivative coincide with those of the exact derived expressions near the boundaries. Accuracy is checked by Monte Carlo simulations.