Evaluation of selected wastewater treatment plants on UiTM Shah Alam Campus / Rusmini Ibrahim

Standards have been established for the quality of effluent discharged from treatment plants to receiving waters. In Malaysia, there are wastewater treatment plants that are not in compliance with the enforcement by the Department of Environment (DOE). Effluents that are discharged are not complying the standard will affect receiving water and ecosystems. This study mainly focused on the performance of wastewater treatment plants in UiTM Shah Alam Campus. Three wastewater treatment plants were selected namely wastewater treatment plants at Mawar College, Teratai College and Seroja College. To achieve the objectives, the laboratory experiments were carried out to analyze the quality of the wastewater generated from the selected wastewater treatment plants. The experiments include test for chemical oxygen demand (COD) and suspended solid (SS). The result shows that only wastewater treatment plant at Seroja College that comply with Standard B. Wastewater treatment plants at Mawar College and Teratai College are not comply against standard and need to be upgraded

Combining mechanistic and data-driven techniques for predictive modelling of wastewater treatment plants

Mechanistic models are widely used for modelling of wastewater treatment plants. However, as they are based on simplified and incomplete domain knowledge, they often lack accurate predictive capabilities. In contrast, data-driven models are able to make accurate predictions, but only in the operational regions that are sufficiently described by the dataset used. We investigate an alternative hybrid model, combining mechanistic and data-driven techniques. We show that the hybrid approach combines the strengths of both modelling paradigms. It allows for accurate predictions out of the training dataset without the need for complete domain knowledge. Moreover, this approach is not limited to wastewater treatment plants and can potentially be applied wherever mechanistic models are used

Adaptive model based control for wastewater treatment plants

In biological wastewater treatment, nitrogen and phosphorous are removed by activated sludge. The process requires oxygen input via aeration of the activated sludge tank. Aeration is responsible for about 60% of the energy consumption of a treatment plant. Hence optimization of aeration can contribute considerably to the increase of energy-efficiency in wastewater treatment. To this end, we introduce an adaptive model based control strategy for aeration called adaptive WOMBAT. The strategy is an improvement of the original WOMBAT, which has been successfully implemented at wastewater treatment plant Westpoort in Amsterdam. In this paper we propose to improve the physics-based model by introducing automatic parameter adaptation. In an experimental model setup the adaptive model based control algorithm proves to result in better effluent quality with less energy consumption. Moreover, it is able to react to the varying circumstances of a real treatment plant and can, therefore, operate without human supervision

Comparisons of nonlinear estimators for wastewater treatment plants

This paper deals with five existing nonlinear estimators (filters), which include Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), Extended H-infinity Filter (EHF), State Dependent Filter (SDF), State Dependent H-Infinity Filter (SDHF) and Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) that are formulated and implemented to estimate unmeasured states of a typical biological wastewater system. The performance of these five estimators of different complexities, behaviour and advantages are demonstrated and compared via nonlinear simulations. This study shows promising application of UKF for monitoring and control of the process variables, which are not directly measurable

Conceptual quality modelling and integrated control of combined urban drainage system

This paper presents the first results of conceptual quality modelling approach oriented to the integrated real-time control (RTC) strategy for urban drainage networks (UDN) and wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) developed in the European project LIFE EFFIDRAIN (Efficient Integrated Real-time Control in Urban Drainage and Wastewater Treatment Plants for Environmental Protection). Model predictive control (MPC) has been selected as a proper RTC to minimize the polluting discharge in case of raining events. The simulator SWMM5 was modified to integrate a lumped conceptual model for total suspended solids (TSS) called SWMM-TSS, which has been used as virtual reality for calibration and validation of the proposed modelling approaches in Perinot network, a real case study in Bordeaux.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Comparison Tables of State Nutrient Trading Programs in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Examines opportunities for wastewater treatment plants to trade credits or offsets with other plants or farms releasing lower volumes of nutrients across states. Compares design elements of programs in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia

LAW CAPACITY WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS

The question of small water users having no centralized wastewater collecting, cleaning and discharging system is of maximal actuality in Romania. Therefor economically efficient solutions are looked for. For disperse mountain villages, farms, or detached households traditional systems, with high maintenance expences because of long networks for small flows, can be economicaly not advantageos. Very small capacity treatement plants are a solution for such cases. The aim of the experimental part of the present work is to simulate situations, damages which can occur during running of a low capacity wastewater treatement plant. Low capacity hosehold wastewater treatement plants are economic alternatives which remove the disadvantages of emptyable basins namely the high costs, the frequvent empying operations, with unpleasant smelling, continous danger of groundwater infection, need for massive and expensive concrete buildings. The proposed plants are based on a classical treatement technology and need emptying of the exess mud only once or twice a year. In opposition with the case of classical plants, the mixture extracted from the proposed low cost systems does not smell and has a relatively low content of solid matter

A critical review of resource recovery from municipal wastewater treatment plants : market supply potentials, technologies and bottlenecks

In recent decades, academia has elaborated a wide range of technological solutions to recover water, energy, fertiliser and other products from municipal wastewater treatment plants. Drivers for this work range from low resource recovery potential and cost effectiveness, to the high energy demands and large environmental footprints of current treatment-plant designs. However, only a few technologies have been implemented and a shift from wastewater treatment plants towards water resource facilities still seems far away. This critical review aims to inform decision-makers in water management utilities about the vast technical possibilities and market supply potentials, as well as the bottlenecks, related to the design or redesign of a municipal wastewater treatment process from a resource recovery perspective. Information and data have been extracted from literature to provide a holistic overview of this growing research field. First, reviewed data is used to calculate the potential of 11 resources recoverable from municipal wastewater treatment plants to supply national resource consumption. Depending on the resource, the supply potential may vary greatly. Second, resource recovery technologies investigated in academia are reviewed comprehensively and critically. The third section of the review identifies nine non-technical bottlenecks mentioned in literature that have to be overcome to successfully implement these technologies into wastewater treatment process designs. The bottlenecks are related to economics and value chain development, environment and health, and society and policy issues. Considering market potentials, technological innovations, and addressing potential bottlenecks early in the planning and process design phase, may facilitate the design and integration of water resource facilities and contribute to more circular urban water management practices