Modelling, identification and control of a denitrifying biofilter

Biological denitri®cation in a ®xed bed reactor is a process gaining popularity in the area of water treatment. The advent of more stringent criteria on nitrate and nitrite concentrations of treated water (along with the need to control and optimize the addition of a carbon source needed to denitrify) make the use of dynamical models able to represent the behaviour of the process not only of interest; it is also compulsory for optimizing control. The paper is concerned with the process dynamic modelling, the parameter identi®cation and the control of the ®xed bed bio®lter with real-life experiments.