Control of the aeration volume in an activated sludge process for nitrogen removal

Abstract

Biological nitrogen removal in an activated sludge process is obtained by two biological processes; nitrification and denitrification. Nitrifying bacteria need dissolved oxygen and a sufficiently large aeration volume for converting ammonium to nitrate in the wastewater. The objective of this paper is to develop an automatic control strategy for adjusting the aerated volume so that the effluent ammonium level can be kept close to a desired value despite major changes in the influent load. The strategy is based on applying exact linearization of the IAWQ Activated Sludge Process Model No 1. Simulation results show that the suggested controller effectively attenuates process disturbances.