Control and management of wastewater treatment plants

A key issue in the successful implementation of the computer control systems for the wastewater treatment plants is the choice of control architecture. In recent years, attempts to use the conventional process control architectures lead to disappointing results. This is due to the rather different nature of wastewater control problems. As a consequence, the role of distributed control system is reduced to a platform for data collection and the control loops are often disabled. Hence, the existing control systems are rarely operated effectively over a long period of time. The barrier to the successful implementation of the control system is not the control software or hardware, but rather the problem of designing control systems that are integrated with the plant operation and management and have a high degree of local autonomy, flexibility and reliability. Within the framework of a distributed control system, a multilayered control architecture is proposed, which meets these requirements