Christian Rosén

Multivariate and multiscale monitoring of wastewater treatment operation.

In this work extensions to principal component analysis (PCA) for wastewater treatment (WWT) process monitoring are discussed. Conventional PCA has some limitations when used for WWT monitoring. Firstly, PCA assumes that data are stationary, which is normally not the case in WWT monitoring. Secondly, PCA is most suitable for monitoring data that display events in one time-scale. However, in WWT operation. disturbances and events occur in different time-scales. These two limitations make conventional PCA unsuitable for WWT monitoring. The first limitation can be overcome by use of adaptive PCA. In adaptive PCA. the PCA model is continuously updated using an exponential memory function. Variable mean, variance and co-variance are thus adapted to the changing conditions. The second problem can be solved by time-scale decomposition of data prior to analysis. The time-scale decomposition methodology involves wavelets and multiresolution analysis (MRA) in combination with PCA. MRA provides a tool for investigation and monitoring of process measurement at different time-scales by decomposing measurement data into separate frequency bands. Time-scale decomposition increases the sensitivity of the monitoring, which makes it possible to detect small but significant events in data displaying large variations. Moreover, time-scale information is sometimes important in the interpretation of a disturbance to determine its physical cause. Also, by decomposing data, the problem of changing process conditions is partly solved. All the presented methods are illustrated with examples using real WWT process data.

Risk assessment modelling of microbiology-related solids separation problems in activated sludge systems

This paper proposes a risk assessment model for settling problems of microbiological origin in activated sludge systems (filamentous bulking, foaming and rising sludge). The aim of the model is not to diagnose microbiology-related solids separation problems with absolute certainty but to quantify in dynamic scenarios whether simulated operational procedures and control strategies lead to favourable conditions for them to arise or not. The rationale behind the model (which integrates the mechanisms of standard activated sludge models with empirical knowledge), its implementation in a fuzzy rule-based system and the details of its operation are illustrated in the different sections of the paper. The performance of the risk assessment model is illustrated by evaluating a number of control strategies facing different short-term influent conditions as well as long-term variability using the IWA/COST simulation benchmark. The results demonstrate that some control strategies, although performing better regarding operating costs and effluent quality, induce a higher risk for solids separation problems. In view of these results, it is suggested to integrate empirical knowledge into mechanistic models to increase reliability and to allow assessment of potential side-effects when simulating complex processes.

Multivariate statistical monitoring of continuous wastewater treatment plants

In this paper, different multivariate statistical approaches for analysing wastewater treatment process data are presented and compared. For this purpose, all the methods have been tested using one-year operational data in a simulation model benchmark. The general monitoring strategy adopted includes a screening stage to improve data quality, an adaptive model to detect and diagnose abnormal events, and two complementary tools for helping in the diagnosis of the faults. The first one is based on the development of a local model that captures the most recent process behaviour and the second one on the application of fuzzy c-means clustering to the scores of the monitoring model. The results have shown that simple scaling parameters adaptation is sufficient to obtain a model useful for monitoring the process during the whole period. Monitoring the deviations from the average daily behaviour showed clear detections of the disturbances in the Hotellings T^2-statistic and this feature was useful to determine different operational states (disturbances) in the process by clustering the PCA scores. On the other hand, the proposed procedure for isolation based on a local model improved the diagnosis results in terms of the responsible variables identified and the indication of the beginning of the fault.

Disturbance detection in wastewater treatment plants

The development in sensor technology has made many wastewater treatment systems data rich but not necessarily information rich. To extract the adequate information from several sensors is not trivial, and it is not sufficient to consider only the time series. Different tools for detecting unusual on-line measurement data and deviating process behaviour are discussed. In this paper various dimension reduction as well as advanced filtering methods are considered in order to extract adequate information for fault detection and diagnosis. Both the operator and the process engineer can take advantage of such methods for proper monitoring of the plant, in particular extreme events and their causes.

Benchmark simulation models, quo vadis?

As the work of the IWA Task Group on Benchmarking of Control Strategies for wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is coming to an end, it is essential to disseminate the knowledge gained. For this reason, all authors of the IWA Scientific and Technical Report on benchmarking have come together to provide their insights, highlighting areas where knowledge may still be deficient and where new opportunities are emerging, and to propose potential avenues for future development and application of the general benchmarking framework and its associated tools. The paper focuses on the topics of temporal and spatial extension, process modifications within the WWTP, the realism of models, control strategy extensions and the potential for new evaluation tools within the existing benchmark system. We find that there are major opportunities for application within all of these areas, either from existing work already being done within the context of the benchmarking simulation models (BSMs) or applicable work in the wider literature. Of key importance is increasing capability, usability and transparency of the BSM package while avoiding unnecessary complexity.

Adding realism to simulated sensors and actuators.

In this paper, we propose a statistical theoretical framework for incorporation of sensor and actuator faults in dynamic simulations of wastewater treatment operation. Sensor and actuator faults and failures are often neglected in simulations for control strategy development and testing, although it is well known that they represent a significant obstacle for realising control at full-scale facilities. The framework for incorporating faults and failures is based on Markov chains and displays the appealing property of easy transition of sensor and actuator history into a model for fault generation. The paper briefly describes Markov theory and how this is used together with models for sensor and actuator dynamics to achieve a realistic simulation of measurements and actuators.

Combining multiway principal component analysis (MPCA) and clustering for efficient data mining of historical data sets of SBR processes

A methodology based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and clustering is evaluated for process monitoring and process analysis of a pilot-scale SBR removing nitrogen and phosphorus. The first step of this method is to build a multi-way PCA (MPCA) model using the historical process data. In the second step, the principal scores and the Q-statistics resulting from the MPCA model are fed to the LAMDA clustering algorithm. This procedure is iterated twice. The first iteration provides an efficient and effective discrimination between normal and abnormal operational conditions. The second iteration of the procedure allowed a clear-cut discrimination of applied operational changes in the SBR history. Important to add is that this procedure helped identifying some changes in the process behaviour, which would not have been possible, had we only relied on visually inspecting this online data set of the SBR (which is traditionally the case in practice). Hence the PCA based clustering methodology is a promising tool to efficiently interpret and analyse the SBR process behaviour using large historical online data sets.

Including the effects of filamentous bulking sludge during the simulation of wastewater treatment plants using a risk assessment model

The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate how including the occurrence of filamentous bulking sludge in a secondary clarifier model will affect the predicted process performance during the simulation of WWTPs. The IWA Benchmark Simulation Model No. 2 (BSM2) is hereby used as a simulation case study. Practically, the proposed approach includes a risk assessment model based on a knowledge-based decision tree to detect favourable conditions for the development of filamentous bulking sludge. Once such conditions are detected, the settling characteristics of the secondary clarifier model are automatically changed during the simulation by modifying the settling model parameters to mimic the effect of growth of filamentous bacteria. The simulation results demonstrate that including effects of filamentous bulking in the secondary clarifier model results in a more realistic plant performance. Particularly, during the periods when the conditions for the development of filamentous bulking sludge are favourable--leading to poor activated sludge compaction, low return and waste TSS concentrations and difficulties in maintaining the biomass in the aeration basins--a subsequent reduction in overall pollution removal efficiency is observed. Also, a scenario analysis is conducted to examine i) the influence of sludge retention time (SRT), the external recirculation flow rate (Q(r)) and the air flow rate in the bioreactor (modelled as k(L)a) as factors promoting bulking sludge, and ii) the effect on the model predictions when the settling properties are changed due to a possible proliferation of filamentous microorganisms. Finally, the potentially adverse effects of certain operational procedures are highlighted, since such effects are normally not considered by state-of-the-art models that do not include microbiology-related solids separation problems.

Performance evaluation of fault detection methods for wastewater treatment processes

Several methods to detect faults have been developed in various fields, mainly in chemical and process engineering. However, minimal practical guidelines exist for their selection and application. This work presents an index that allows for evaluating monitoring and diagnosis performance of fault detection methods, which takes into account several characteristics, such as false alarms, false acceptance, and undesirable switching from correct detection to non‐detection during a fault event. The usefulness of the index to process engineering is demonstrated first by application to a simple example. Then, it is used to compare five univariate fault detection methods (Shewhart, EWMA, and residuals of EWMA) applied to the simulated results of the Benchmark Simulation Model No. 1 long‐term (BSM1_LT). The BSM1_LT, provided by the IWA Task Group on Benchmarking of Control Strategies, is a simulation platform that allows for creating sensor and actuator faults and process disturbances in a wastewater treatment plant. The results from the method comparison using BSM1_LT show better performance to detect a sensor measurement shift for adaptive methods (residuals of EWMA) and when monitoring the actuator signals in a control loop (e.g., airflow). Overall, the proposed index is able to screen fault detection methods. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2011;108: 333–344.

Qualitative representation of trends: an alternative approach to process diagnosis and control

The potential for qualitative representation of trends in the context of process diagnosis and control is evaluated in this paper. The technique for qualitative description of the data series is relatively new to the field of process monitoring and diagnosis and is based on the cubic spline wavelet decomposition of the data. It is shown that the assessed qualitative description of trends can be coupled easily with existing process knowledge and does not demand the user to understand the underlying technique in detail, in contrast to, for instance, multivariate techniques in Statistical Process Control. The assessed links can be integrated straightforwardly into the framework of supervisory control systems by means of look-up tables, expert systems or case-based reasoning frameworks. This in turn allows the design of a supervisory control system leading to fully automated control actions. The technique is illustrated by an application to a pilot-scale SBR.