Experience with data mining for the anaerobic wastewater treatment process

Anaerobic digestion provides an effective way of disposing organic material in wastewater. The EU-funded TELEMAC project aims at improving the reliability and efficiency of monitoring and control of this type of wastewater treatment plant. One of its special features is the idea of a telecontrol centre which monitors multiple, geographically distributed plants remotely, acts as a centre of expertise, and brings together the expertise of a network of remote experts. Data mining has been identified as a potentially useful contributing technology. Sensor data is now becoming available for some pilot, laboratory scale, and industrial sized digesters. This paper presents the directions of work and emerging results of data mining. Particular themes considered here include: experience gained in the data mining exercise; the use of confidence and prediction intervals; prospects for generalisation over different sizes and types of anaerobic digester; relationship to the overall supervision system developed in the project.