Turbidity control on dissolved air flotation process using fuzzy logic

Abstract

Abstract This study intends to explore fuzzy logic control on clean water turbidity process with dissolved air flotation (DAF). Three different strategies were tested to regulate clean water turbidity by manipulating the saturator vessel flow output aiming for low actuators control effort. Saturator pressure was the manipulated variable (MV) in the first control loop named SISO I. The second control loop, SISO II, used recycle stream valve opening as MV. The third control loop (MISO) was developed applying fuzzy logic instead PID control. Several performance criteria were used to analyze the process control performance such as integral absolute error (IAE), recycle stream valve and saturator vessel pressure regulating valve control efforts, ECV01 and ECV02 respectively. Results from SISO I and SISO II strategies showed that recycle stream is a better MV than saturator vessel pressure for clean water turbidity control in the DAF process. Only SISO II and MISO strategies proved to be capable of regulating the process variable. However, MISO control showed better performance based on IAE value against SISO II, with a reduction of 11.24% on its value, even the recycle stream valve control effort for MISO control being fairly higher than that for SISO II. Nevertheless, fuzzy logic control application gave rise to better turbidity control, and consequently prevented the excessive use of clean water in the recycling stream.