Waste water treatment systems (design, automation and control)

This long project continued work begun during an EPSRC supported TCS with EffTech Ltd and SewTech Ltd that investigated the control, automation and design of new types of effluent treatment plants.

Single sludge systems were modelled to improve the computer aided design and control of activated sludge processes. Flow rates and stability were predicted for large scale airlift reactors.

The project modelled the prediction of liquid volumetric flow rates in large scale airlift reactors and introduced an intelligent actuator based system for automatic control of a waste-water treatment plant. A high recirculation airlift reactor was simulated in steady-state operation and the design of airlift reactors was automated using a blackboard expert system.

The new models of the fluid dynamic processes in high-recirculation airlift reactors eventually led to new methods to design large scale high-recirculation airlift reactors.

Althea de-SOUZA completed her PhD in 2000 as part of this project after studying the use of computational fluid dynamics to simulate the flow in a high recirculation airlift reactor. The PhD was directed by A Poland and DA Sanders.

Improved the design and control of waste water treatment plants.

Created:

- New models of the fluid dynamic processes in high-recirculation airlift reactors.
- New methods to design large scale high-recirculation airlift reactors.