Collaborative Control Applied to BSM1 for Wastewater Treatment Plants

Abstract

This paper describes a design procedure for a collaborative control structure in Plant Wide Control (PWC), taking into account the existing controllable parameters as a novelty in the procedure. The collaborative control structure includes two layers, supervisory and regulatory, which are determined according to the dynamics hierarchy obtained by means of the Hankel matrix. The supervisory layer is determined by the main dynamics of the process and the regulatory layer comprises the secondary dynamics and controllable parameters. The methodology proposed is applied to a wastewater treatment plant, particularly to the Benchmark Simulation Model No 1 (BSM1) for the activated sludge process, comparing the results with the use of a Model Predictive Controller in the supervisory layer. For determining controllable parameters in the BSM1 control, a new specific oxygen mass transfer model in the biological reactor has been developed, separating the kLa volumetric mass transfer coefficient into two controllable parameters, kL and a.