Modeling and simulation of adsorption and biodegradation in activated sludge process based on cellular automata

Considering the complexity and abundant kinetics behaviors of activated sludge, the paper established a cellular automata model (CAM) for adsorption and biodegradation in activated sludge process. The simulations with practical parameters were made. The results indicate that the CAM replicates complex adsorption and biodegradtion, and well describes the removal of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and the growth of activated sludge. The CAM simulates activated sludge process in the bioreactor visually, and exhibits advantages of modeling wastewater treatment based on cellular automata, while offering a basic method for modeling similar complex systems. At the same time, it depicts the characteristics of complex system such as diversity, randomicity, indeterminacy and strong nonlinearity by means of probabilistic rules of CAM.