Aeration Optimization and Control for Wastewater Treatment Processes

In this work we develop model based control strategies for the optimization and control of the aeration of a municipal wastewater treatment plant, intermittently operated by switching the aeration on and off. The proposed strategies aim to reduce energy consumption as well as to further improve effluent quality. A two-layer hierarchical control structure is implemented: (i) the lower layer using a modified version of the GPC to control the dissolved oxygen concentration and minimize the aeration energy and (ii) the higher level (optimization layer) where standard GPC algorithm is used to obtain the optimal values for the setpoint of the dissolved oxygen in the bioreactor. The developed control strategies show good performances and significant energy savings in comparison with the conventional control systems.