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Department of Information Technology

MODELING AND AUTOMATIC CONTROL OF WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS

Objectives

Increasing demands on effluent quality and increasing loads in combination with shortage of land area call for an improved control and optimization of wastewater treatment plants. Applied research in automatic control is one important tool in achieving an overall high plant performance. An improved control and optimization of wastewater treatment plants is one important tool to achieve a more resource efficient treatment of wastewater, like reducing chemicals and energy.

We are developing control and estimation strategies for wastewater treatment plants. In particular, the activated sludge process is studied. A key goal is to develop and evaluate control strategies which can be of practical use in improving the performance of the plants. In several projects we develop methods for reducing the energy consumption without reducing the effluent quality (sometimes the effluent quality even improves!). From 2012, the research field is broaden and are now also covering montoring and fault detection methods applied to wastewater treatment plants


The research is led by Professor Bengt Carlsson. He was the chair of a regional research consortium ("VA-kluster Mälardalen") between 2010-2018. The consortium has participants from five Universities, two Research Institutes, and eleven municipal wastewater treatment plants.Homepage for Mälardalsklustret (in Swedish with an English summary). An interview (in English) with the former chair of the research consortium is given here Interview.

General achievements:

1. Six PhD theses have been completed in this research area:

3. A JAVA based simulator of the activated sludge process have been developed. The JASS simulator was 2005 extended to also simulate Biological Phosphorus (BioP) removal. Go to the JASS homepage.

4. A course in Wastewater treatment has been developed for the Master of Science program in Aquatic and Environmental Engineering (in Swedish). The course has been given once a year since 1996. In an evaluation 2006, the course was selected as the best ranked course of all courses evaluated by the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University.

5. We have developed a three days course entitled "Control of wastewater treatment plants" which is given (in Swedish) for wastewater treatment plant personnel. The course has been given yearly since 1999. See further Svenskt Vatten.

6. Every year, several master theses projects are completed in the area of water and wastewater technologies by students from the Aquatic and Environmental Engineering program, see master theses.

Research topics:

  1. Design and evaluation of monitoring and fault detection methods for wastewater treatment systems.
  2. Development of control strategies for wastewater treatment processes.
  3. Modelling and analysing bioreactors and processes in wastewater treatment plants
Updated  2022-06-05 19:36:14 by Bengt Carlsson.