Title: A benchmark for evaluating oxidation ditch control strategies

Primary Researcher: Abdallah Abusam
Email address: abdallah.abusam@wur.nl
Submitted on: October 3, 2006

Start date: 01 June 1998
End date: 15 January 2001

Introduction:

Large wastewater treatment plants often rely on advanced control strategies for achieving the imposed strict effluent standards. So far many control strategies have been proposed. Evaluation of alternative control strategies, which mostly are not verified using real data, is a real problem. A solution to this problem can be found in developing a benchmark to evaluate these control strategies. A benchmark is defined as: "Protocol to obtain a measure of performance of control strategies for activated sludge plants based on numerical, realistic simulations of the controlled plant."

Aim:

To develop a benchmarking methodology that can be used for evaluating oxidation ditch control strategies.

Research:

The research have addressed the following objectives:
(i) development of a simple and realistic model for oxidation ditches, using available process data (ii) development of evaluation criteria,(iii) sensitivity analysis to specify model parameters that need special attention, (iv) uncertainty analysis to quantify the possible effect of various sources of uncertainty on the performance indices, (v) validation of the benchmark and (vi) evaluation of alternative control strategies for a specific full-scale plant.

External Funding Sponsors

WU