Modeling wastewater pumping stations for cost-efficient control

In waste water pumping stations, centrifugal pumps driven by induction motors are used to transport the collected effluent to the treatment plants. Those pumps can be controlled either using frequency converters or on-and-off control using soft starters. In this paper a method for modeling wastewater pumping stations using the component oriented modeling language Modelica is presented. The model provides a valuable simulation tool to validate and judge on the different control schemes of these stations. This approach is applied successfully on a real pumping station located at the northern part of Gaza. The derived model facilitates tuning the control parameters and allows better understanding of the system dynamics.