81 research outputs found
Modelling activated sludge wastewater treatment plants using artificial intelligence techniques (fuzzy logic and neural networks)
Activated sludge process (ASP) is the most commonly used biological wastewater
treatment system. Mathematical modelling of this process is important for improving its
treatment efficiency and thus the quality of the effluent released into the receiving water
body. This is because the models can help the operator to predict the performance of the
plant in order to take cost-effective and timely remedial actions that would ensure
consistent treatment efficiency and meeting discharge consents. However, due to the
highly complex and non-linear characteristics of this biological system, traditional
mathematical modelling of this treatment process has remained a challenge.
This thesis presents the applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for
modelling the ASP. These include the Kohonen Self Organising Map (KSOM),
backpropagation artificial neural networks (BPANN), and adaptive network based fuzzy
inference system (ANFIS). A comparison between these techniques has been made and
the possibility of the hybrids between them was also investigated and tested.
The study demonstrated that AI techniques offer viable, flexible and effective modelling
methodology alternative for the activated sludge system. The KSOM was found to be
an attractive tool for data preparation because it can easily accommodate missing data
and outliers and because of its power in extracting salient features from raw data. As a
consequence of the latter, the KSOM offers an excellent tool for the visualisation of
high dimensional data. In addition, the KSOM was used to develop a software sensor to
predict biological oxygen demand. This soft-sensor represents a significant advance in
real-time BOD operational control by offering a very fast estimation of this important
wastewater parameter when compared to the traditional 5-days bio-essay BOD test
procedure. Furthermore, hybrids of KSOM-ANN and KSOM-ANFIS were shown to
result much more improved model performance than using the respective modelling
paradigms on their own.Damascus Universit
Modelling Unconfined Groundwater Recharge Using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System
Estimating groundwater recharge using mathematical models such as water budget or soil water balance method has been proved to be very difficult due to the complex, uncertain multidimensional nature of the process, despite the simplicity of the concept. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been proposed to deal with this complexity and uncertainty in a similar way to human thinking and reasoning. This study proposed the use of the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) to model unconfined groundwater recharge using a set of data records from Kaharoa monitoring site in the North Island of New Zealand. Fifty-three data points, comprising a set of input parameters such as rainfall, temperature, sunshine hours, and radiation, for a period of approximately four and a half years, have been used to estimate ground water recharge. The results suggest that the ANFIS model is overall a reliable estimator for groundwater recharge, the correlation coefficient of the model reached 93% using independent data set. The method is easy, flexible and reliable; hence, it is recommended to be used for similar applications
Review of Anaerobic Digestion Modeling and Optimization Using Nature-Inspired Techniques
Although it is a well-researched topic, the complexity, time for process stabilization, and economic factors related to anaerobic digestion call for simulation of the process offline with the help of computer models. Nature-inspired techniques are a recently developed branch of artificial intelligence wherein knowledge is transferred from natural systems to engineered systems. For soft computing applications, nature-inspired techniques have several advantages, including scope for parallel computing, dynamic behavior, and self-organization. This paper presents a comprehensive review of such techniques and their application in anaerobic digestion modeling. We compiled and synthetized the literature on the applications of nature-inspired techniques applied to anaerobic digestion. These techniques provide a balance between diversity and speed of arrival at the optimal solution, which has stimulated their use in anaerobic digestion modeling
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