Modelling and Control of Wastewater Treatment Plants A Perspective from Uppsala

Bengt Carlsson
Department of Systems and Control Group, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 27, SE-751 03, Uppsala, Sweden phone: +46 18 4713119, fax: +46 18 503611, e-mail: bc@syscon.uu.se

EXTENDED ABSTRACT
The department of Systems and Control at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden was founded some 25 years ago. Today the department has 25 employees including 15 PhD students and 7 professors and senior researchers. The research is conducted in three main areas: automatic control, signal processing and system analysis. We have a long tradition in system identification which was a good platform when during the 80s various estimation problems in signal processing were approached We now hold a broad competence in the whole chain: estimation system identification digital signal processing communication control. An overview of our research can be found on our home page http://www.syscon.uu.se. LIENHYPERTEXTEBelow, a brief description of some conducted research projects related to WWT is given. A more detailed overview, including references, can be found from the homepage.

A standard autotuner based on the strm-Hgglund relay method has been evaluated on the main WWTP plant in Uppsala. Also gain scheduling was used. The automatic tuning gave a significantly improved control performance. A non linear DO controller based on an estimated model of the oxygen transfer rate has been developed and evaluated in a pilot scale plant. The non linear controller gave a good control performance over the whole operation range whereas a linear controller started to oscillate at low loads. An important issue is the choice of set-point for the DO controller, i.e. what is a suitable DO in the zone. In practice the set-point is often kept at a fixed level. A set-point controller which utilizes measurements of ammonium concentration in the last aerated zone have been evaluated. It was shown that this strategy reduced the total nitrogen discharge as well as the energy consumption.

A Java based activated sludge process simulator

A simulator of the activated sludge process in a wastewater treatment plant has been developed The simulator is written in the programming language JAVA and is run over Internet. A novel graphical user interface is used to run the simulator and to present the simulation results in real time. Different automatic control strategies are implemented in order to illustrate the importance of automatic control in wastewater treatment plants. The simulator has been used for educational purposes both for students at universities and personnel at wastewater treatment plants. Currently, three WWTPs have bought adapted versions of the simulator. A demo version of the simulator is located at http://www.syscon.uu.se/~psa/.

Control of the dosing of an external carbon source

Often, an external carbon source is needed to obtain a high denitrification rate in an activated sludge process. Both simulation studies and experiments in the pilot plant have been done to evaluate control strategies for external carbon flow rate. The main idea is to control the flow rate of external carbon so that the nitrate level in the last anoxic zone is kept low and constant. A simple direct adaptive controller gave good control performance in a pilot plant despite a fairly noisy nitrate sensor. Also multivariable controller LQG control, and an iterative pole placement design have been suggested and evaluated in simulation studies. Currently we are developing feed forward control strategies based on simplified IAWQ ASM1 models. Preliminary results indicate that even very simple feedforward strategies based on mass balance models give a very good disturbance rejections.

On-line estimation of the dissolved oxygen dynamics

The respiration rate in an activated sludge process gives a measure of the biologically degradable load in the sludge. The oxygen transfer rate gives a measure of the efficiency of the aerators. On-line estimation of the respiration rate and oxygen transfer rate is therefore valuable for process diagnosis and model based control. The basic idea is to estimate the respiration rate and oxygen transfer rate from measurements of the dissolved oxygen and the air flow rate. A reliable estimation of the respiration rate reduces the need for expensive and time-consuming batch laboratory tests or expensive on-line respirometers. Several methods for on-line estimation of the respiration rate and oxygen transfer have been developed and successfully applied to real data.

Multivariable modelling
It is of general interest to study different ways of modelling the activated sludge process. Various estimation methods based on linear regression models have been studied. In particular, ordinary least squares (OLS), principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) were compared. Also multivariable state-space models estimated with subspace algorithms have been considered.

Current research
Current research are focused on simple control strategies for external carbon flow rate, uppgradings of the JAVA simulator, benchmark studies of new control strategies and applications to anaerobic digester processes. In collaboration with IEA, in Lund, we have started reserach in the area of Innovative Information Systems which is a part of a six-year national strategic research programme called Sustainable Urban Water Management. EQ

Automatic control concentration (DO)

of

the

dissolved

oxygen

Control of the DO in an activated sludge process is of importance both for process efficency and energy cost. The following approaches has been studied: