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Department of Information Technology

MODELING AND CONTROL OF WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS

Objectives

Increasing demands on effluent quality and increasing loads in combination with shortage of land area call for an improved control and optimization of wastewater treatment plants. Applied research in automatic control is one important tool in achieving an overall high plant performance. An improved control and optimization of wastewater treatment plants lead to an increased pollutant removal, a reduced need for chemicals and energy savings.

We are developing control and estimation strategies for wastewater treatment plants. In particular, the activated sludge process is studied. A key goal is to develop and evaluate control strategies which can be of practical use in improving the performance of the plants. In several projects we develop methods for reducing the energy consumption without reducing the effluent quality (sometimes the effluent quality even improves!). From 2012, we have broadened our research field and are now also studying monitoring and fault detection in wastewater treatment plants.


The following researchers in our group perform research in applying methods from automatic control (including monitoring and fault detection) to wastewater treatment technologies:

We are leading a regional research consortium ("VA-kluser Mälardalen") with participants from five Universities, two Research Institutes, and ten municipal wastewater treatment plants.
Homepage for Mälardalsklustret (in Swedish with an English summary)


General achievements:

1. Five Ph.D. theses have been completed in this research area:
2. The most current licentiate thesis is
3. A JAVA based simulator of the activated sludge process have been developed. The JASS simulator was 2005 extended to also simulate Biological Phosphorus (BioP) removal. Go to the JASS homepage.

4. A course in Wastewater treatment has been developed for the Master of Science program in Aquatic and Environmental Engineering (in Swedish). The course has been given once a year since 1996. In an evaluation 2006, the course was selected as the best ranked course of all courses evaluated by the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University.

5. We have developed a three days course entitled "Control of wastewater treatment plants" which is given (in Swedish) for wastewater treatment plant personnel. The course has been given yearly since 1999. See further Svenskt Vatten.

6. Every year, several master theses projects are completed in the area of water and wastewater technologies by students from the Aquatic and Environmental Engineering program, see master theses.

Research topics:

  1. Design and evaluation of monitoring and fault detection methods for wastewater treatment systems.
  2. Development of control strategies for the wastewater treatment processes.
  3. Design of a simulator for the activated sludge process.
  4. Economic operation of the activated sludge process.

Most of the older experimental work (92-97) has been performed in a pilot-scale plant at the main municipal wastewater treatment plant, Kungsängsverket, Uppsala. See description.

Updated  2016-02-18 11:58:15 by Bengt Carlsson.