Aspects of an expert design system for the wastewater treatment industry

A new computer aided design program has been created, which uses computer modelling and simulation techniques in order to automatically generate a design solution for a High Recirculation Airlift Reactor (HRAR) wastewater treatment plant. This program replaces a set of programs which could only be used by process design experts, as many decisions had to be made whilst using the design system. A new expert system is being created to automatically integrate expert knowledge into the design process. This expert system will sit above the design program and control the design process. The objective of the new work presented here was to investigate methods for implementing this new expert system onto the new design program. This consisted of creating prototype software in order to demonstrate the advantages of applying expert systems methods to the design of the HRAR treatment process. This paper introduces the approach taken to acquiring and formulating the expert knowledge, and presents simple software to demonstrate the approach.