Global Internal Recirculation Alternative Operation to Reduce Nitrogen and Ammonia Limit Violations and Pumping Energy Costs in Wastewater Treatment Plants

The internal recirculation plays an important role in different areas of the biological treatment of wastewater treatment plants because it has a great influence on the concentration of pollutants, especially nutrients. A usual manipulation of the internal recirculation flow rate is based on the target of controlling the nitrate concentration in the last anoxic tank. This work proposes an alternative for the manipulation of the internal recirculation flow rate instead of nitrate control, with the objective of avoiding limit violations of nitrogen and ammonia concentrations and reducing operational costs. A fuzzy controller is proposed to achieve it based on the effects of the internal recirculation flow rate in different areas of the biological treatment. The proposed manipulation of the internal recirculation flow rate is compared to the application of the usual nitrate control in an already established and published operation strategy by using the internationally known benchmark simulation model no. 2 as a working scenario. The results show improvements with reductions of 59.40% in ammonia limit violations, 2.35% in total nitrogen limit violations, and 38% in pumping energy costs

Graph embedding-based intelligent industrial decision for complex sewage treatment processes

Intelligent algorithms-driven industrial decision systems have been a general demand for modeling complex sewage treatment processes (STP). Existing researches modeled complex STP with the use of various neural network models, yet neglecting the fact that latent and occasional relations exist inside complex STP. To deal with the challenge, this paper proposes graph embedding-based intelligent industrial decision for complex STP (GE-STP). The graph embedding (GE) scheme is employed to enhance feature extraction and neural computing structure is utilized to simulate uncertain biochemical transformation inside STP. The introduction of GE can not only improves the fineness of feature spaces, but also improves the representative ability of models towards complex industrial processes. On this basis, the GE-STP is evaluated on a real-world data set collected from a realistic sewage treatment plant equipped with a set of Internet of Things devices. And some typical neural network models that have been utilized for modeling complex STP, are selected as baseline methods. Three groups of experiments show that efficiency of the GE-STP exceeds baselines about 6%–12%, and that the GE-STP is not susceptible to parameter changing

New approach for regulation of the internal recirculation flow rate by fuzzy logic in biological wastewater treatments

Altres ajuts: Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICMarian Barbu acknowledge the support of the project " EXPERT ", Contract no. 14PFE/17.10.2018.The internal recirculation plays an important role on the different biological processes of wastewater treatment plants because it has a great influence on the concentration of pollutants, especially nutrients. Usually, the internal recirculation flow rate is kept fixed or manipulated by control techniques to maintain a fixed nitrate set-point in the last anoxic tank. This work proposes a new control strategy to manipulate the internal recirculation flow rate by applying a fuzzy controller. The proposed controller takes into account the effects of the internal recirculation flow rate on the inlet of the biological treatment and on the denitrification and nitrification processes with the aim of reducing violations of legally established limits of nitrogen and ammonia and also reducing operational costs. The proposed fuzzy controller is tested by simulation with the internationally known benchmark simulation model no. 2. The objective is to apply the proposed fuzzy controller in any control strategy, only replacing the manipulation of the internal recirculation flow rate, to improve the plant operation.Therefore, it has been implemented in five operation strategies from the literature, replacing their original internal recirculation flow rate control, and simulation results are compared with those of the original strategies. Results show improvements with the application of the proposed fuzzy controller of between 2.25 and 57.94% in reduction of total nitrogen limit violations, between 55.22 and 79.69% in reduction of ammonia limit violations and between 0.84 and 38.06% in cost reduction of pumping energy

Dynamic surrogate modelling for multistep-ahead prediction of multivariate nonlinear chemical processes

This work proposes a methodology for multivariate dynamic modeling and multistep-ahead prediction of nonlinear systems using surrogate models for the application to nonlinear chemical processes. The methodology provides a systematic and robust procedure for the development of data-driven dynamic models capable of predicting the process outputs over long time horizons. It is based on using surrogate models to construct several nonlinear autoregressive exogenous models (NARX) with each one approximating the future behavior of one process output as a function of the current and previous process inputs and outputs. The developed dynamic models are employed in a recursive schema to predict the process future outputs over several time steps (multistep-ahead prediction). The methodology is able to manage two different scenarios: (1) one in which a set of input–output signals collected from the process is only available for training and (2) another in which a mathematical model of the process is available and can be used to generate specific datasets for training. With respect to the latter, the proposed methodology includes a specific procedure for the selection of training data in dynamic modeling based on design of computer experiment (DOCE) techniques. The proposed methodology is applied to case studies from the process industry presented in the literature. The results show very high prediction accuracies over long time horizons. Also, owing to the flexibility, robustness, and computational efficiency of surrogate modeling, the methodology allows dealing with a wide range of situations, which would be difficult to address using first-principles models.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Hydrogen sulfide removal from synthetic biogas using anoxic biofilm reactors

Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli kehittää bioreaktoreita sulfidin poistamiseen nestemäisistä jätevirroista anoksisissa olosuhteissa. Lisäksi tavoitteena oli mahdollistaa rikkivetyä sisältävien kaasumaisten ja nitraattia sisältävien nestemäisten jätevirtojen yhtaikainen käsittely. Ensiksi tutkittiin liukoisten epäorgaanisten rikkiyhdisteiden hapetusta rikkiä hapettavia ja nitraattia pelkistäviä (SO-NR) bakteereita sisältävällä mikrobiviljelmällä kahdessa erilaisessa bioreaktorissa, leijupetireaktorissa (FBR) ja kantajakappalereaktorissa (MBBR). Bioreaktoreiden toimintaa syötteen eri typen ja rikin moolisuhteilla vertailtiin käyttäen tiosulfaattia elektronidonorina ja nitraattia elektroniakseptorina. Molemmissa reaktoreissa saavutettiin yli 98 %:n tiosulfaatin poistotehokkuus ja nitraatti saatiin poistettua kokonaan N/S-suhteen ollessa 0,5. Erittäin typpirajoitteisissa olosuhteissa (NS suhde 0,1), MBBR:llä saavutettu tiosulfaatin poistotehokkuus (37,8 %) oli korkeampi kuin FBR:llä saavutettu tiosulfaatin poistotehokkuus (26,1 %). Kun syötteen N/S suhde palautettiin arvoon 0,5, MBBR:llä tiosulfaatin poistotehokkuus palautui yhden päivän aikana arvoon 94 %, kun taas FBR:llä kesti kolme päivää, että tiosulfaatin poistotehokkuus nousi arvoon 80 %. Kummallekin reaktorille kehitettiin oman euroverkko-pohjainen malli, joka ennusti luotettavasti tiosulfaatin ja nitraatin poistotehokkuuksia eri olosuhteissa. MBBR:ään rikastunutta SO-NR-viljelmää hyödynnettiin valutusbiosuodattimessa (BTF) rikkivetyä ja nitraattia sisältävien synteettisten jätevirtojen samanaikaiseen käsittelyyn. Anoksisella BTF:llä suurin saavutettu rikkivedyn poistokapasiteetti oli 19,2 g S m-3 h-1 (99 % poistotehokkuus) rikkivetykuorman ollessa 20,0 g S m-3 h-1 (~500 ppmv) ja N/S suhteen noin 1,7. Koska nitraattia sisältävät jätevedet voivat sisältää myös orgaanisia yhdisteitä toisessa BTF:ssä tutkittiin Paracoccus versutus MAL 1HM19 kannan kykyä poistaa samanaikaisesti rikkivetyä, nitraattia ja orgaanisia yhdisteitä. Tällä BTF:llä saavutettiin nitraatin poistonopeus 16,7 g NO3--N m-3 h-1 ja asetaatin poistonopeus 42,0 g-asetaattia m-3 h-1. Saavutetut poistonopeudet olivat korkeampia kuin autotrofisia SO-NR bakteereja hyödyntävällä BTF:llä saavutetut arvot, jotka olivat 11,1 g NO3--N m-3 h-1 ja 10,2 g-asetaattia m-3 h-1. SO-NR bakteerien hallitseman anoksisen BTF:n toimintaa tutkittiin vaihtuvissa olosuhteissa kuten muuttuva kaasun ja valutusnesteen virtausnopeus, katkonainen nitraatin syöttö ja rikkivedyn shokkikuormitus, sillä tällaiset häiriöt ovat mahdollisia käytännön sovelluksissa. Olosuhteiden ohimenevät muutokset vaikuttivat merkittävästi rikkivedyn poistokapasiteettiin. Esimerkiksi rikkivedyn shokkikuormituksen jälkeen kesti 1,7 päivää ennen kuin rikkivedyn poistotehokkuus palasi yli 99 %:n tasolle. Yhteenvetona voidaan todeta, että MBBR mahdollisti tehokkaamman tiosulfaatin poiston kuin FBR erityisesti typpirajoitteisissa olosuhteissa. MBBR:n ja BTF:n osoitettiin palautuvan nopeasti ohimenevistä kuormitustilanteista ja mahdollistavan siis vakaan epäorgaanisten rikkiyhteisen poiston synteettisistä jätevirroista.The aim of this work was to develop and study anoxic bioreactors for the removal of reduced inorganic sulfur compounds from liquid and gaseous waste streams. In addition, the aim was to enable process integration for the simultaneous treatment of H2S con-taminated gas streams and NO3--containing wastewater. The experiments related to sulfide oxidation in the liquid phase were conducted in two different attached growth bioreactors, i.e. a fluidized-bed reactor (FBR) and a moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR), inoculated with the same mixed culture of sulfur-oxidizing nitrate-reducing (SO-NR) bacteria. The bioreactors were operated under different nitro-gen-to-sulfur (N/S) molar ratios using S2O32- and NO3- as an energy source and electron acceptor, respectively. Results revealed that both the FBR and MBBR achieved S2O32- removal efficiencies (RE) >98% and completely removed NO3- at an N/S ratio of 0.5. Under severe nitrate limitation (N/S ratio of 0.1), the S2O32- RE in the MBBR (37.8%) was higher than that observed in the FBR (26.1%). In addition, the MBBR showed better resilience to nitrate limitation than the FBR as the S2O32- RE was recovered to 94% within 1 day after restoring the feed N/S ratio to 0.5, while it took 3 days to obtain 80% S2O32- RE in the FBR. Artificial neural network models were successfully used to predict the FBR and MBBR performance, i.e. S2O32- and NO3- RE as well as sulfate production. The SO-NR biomass from the MBBR was used to inoculate an anoxic biotrickling filter (BTF), which was studied for simultaneous treatment of H2S and NO3- containing waste streams. In the anoxic BTF, a maximum H2S elimination capacity (EC) of 19.2 g S m-3 h-1 (99% RE) was obtained at an inlet H2S load of 20.0 g S m-3 h-1 (~500 ppmv) and an N/S ratio of ~1.7. As some NO3--containing wastewaters can also contain organic compounds, the anoxic BTF inoculated with Paracoccus versutus strain MAL 1HM19 was studied for the simultaneous treatment of H2S, NO3- and organic carbon containing waste streams. With this BTF, NO3- and acetate removal rates of 16.7 g NO3--N m-3 h-1 and 42.0 g acetate m-3 h-1, respectively, were achieved, which was higher than the values observed in the BTF inoculated with the mixed culture of autotrophic SO-NR bacteria (11.1 g NO3--N m-3 h-1 and 10.2 g acetate m-3 h-1). Anoxic BTFs were operated under several transient conditions (i.e. varied gas and trickling liquid flow rates, intermittent NO3- supply and H2S shock loads) to evaluate the impacts of sudden changes that usually occur in practical applications. The different transient conditions significantly affected the H2S EC of the anoxic BTF. After applying H2S shock loads, the H2S RE fully recovered to >99% within 1.7 days after resuming normal operation. In summary, the MBBR was more effective for the removal of S2O32- than the FBR, es-pecially under nitrate limited conditions. Based on the short recovery times after expo-sure to transient-state conditions, the anoxic MBBR and BTF were found to be resilient and robust systems for removal of reduced sulfur compounds under autotrophic and mixotrophic conditions