TECHNICAL PAPERS
Sep 1, 1990

Testing Expert System for Activated Sludge Process Control

Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 116, Issue 5

Abstract

The wastewater treatment plant operator's problem in collecting, storing, manipulating, and interpreting data is an information‐management problem. It is believed that the operator's performance in controlling the treatment process can be improved if he is equipped with a convenient and efficient method for extracting useful information from the data. This paper presents a rule‐based expert system within an integrated information‐management system. The expert system only considers the activated sludge process, but the information system is for the entire treatment plant. The expert system provides the operator with timely advice based on the latest available process data as interpreted by a set of rules constructed with the help of experienced and skilled operators. The main purpose of the paper is to present case studies of an approach for developing and refining the control rules and for testing their accuracy and effectiveness. The expert system consistently reproduced the expert operator's decisions and performed better than nonexpert operators.

Get full access to this article

View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.

References

1.
Aikins, J. S. (1984). “A representation scheme using both frames and rules.” Rule‐based expert systems. G. B. Buchanan and H. E. Shortliffe, eds., Addison‐Wesley, Reading, Mass., 424–440.
2.
Barr, A., and Feigenbaum, E. A. (1981). The handbook of artificial intelligence. Vol. 1, William Kaufmann, Menlo Park, Calif.
3.
Beck, M. B., Latten, A., and Tong, R. M. (1978). Modelling and operational control of the activated sludge process in wastewater treatment. Int. Inst. for Appl. Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
4.
Berthouex, P. M., Hunter, W. G., and Pallesen, L. (1978). “Dynamic behavior of an activated sludge plant.” Water Res., 12, 957–972.
5.
Berthouex, P. M., and Hunter, W. G. (1983). “How to construct reference distributions to evaluate treatment plant effluent quality.” J. Water Pollut. Control Fed., 55(12), 1418–1424.
6.
Berthouex, P. M., Wenje, L., and Darjatmoko, A. (1987). “A statistics‐based information and expert system for plant control and improvement.” Proc. 5th Nat. Conf. on Microcomputers in Civil Engineering, ASCE, 1, 146–150.
7.
Berthouex, P. M., Lai, W., and Darjatmoko, A. (1989). “Statistics‐based approach to wastewater treatment plant operations.” J. Envir. Engrg., ASCE, 115(3), 650–671.
8.
Bidstrup, S. M., and Grady, C. P. L., Jr. (1988). “SSSP—simulation of single‐sludge processes.” J. Water Pollut. Control Fed., 60(3), 351–361.
9.
Box, G. E. P., and Jenkins, G. M. (1970). Time series analysis: Forecasting and control. Holden Day, San Francisco, Calif.
10.
Box, G. E. P., Hunter, W. G., and Hunter, J. S. (1978). Statistics for experimenters: An introduction to design, data analysis, and model building. John Wiley and Sons, New York, N.Y.
11.
Busby, J. B., and Andrews, J. F. (1975). “Dynamic modeling and control strategies for the activated sludge process.” J. Water Pollut. Control Fed., 47(5), 1055–1079.
12.
Cheeseman, P. (1984). “Learning of expert systems from data.” Proc. IEEE Workshop on Principles of Knowledge Based Systems, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society, 1, 115–121.
13.
Cromarty, S. (1985). “What are current expert system tools missing.” Proc., IEEE 1985 Computer Conf., IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 411–418.
14.
Debelak, K. A., and Sims, C. A. (1981). “Stochastic modeling of an industrial activated sludge process.” Water Res., 15, 1173–1183.
15.
Gaschnig, J., et al. (1983). “Evaluation of expert systems: Issues and case studies.” Building expert systems, F. Hayes‐Roth et al., eds., Addison‐Wesley, Reading, Mass., 241–280.
16.
Gustafson, D., et al. (1977). “A probabilistic system for identifying suicide attemptors.” Computers and Biomedical Res., 10, 83–89.
17.
Hayes‐Roth, F., Waterman, D. A., and Lenat, D. B., eds. (1983). Building expert systems. Addison‐Wesley, Reading, Mass.
18.
Hayes‐Roth, F. (1984). “The knowledge‐based expert system: A tutorial.” IEEE Computer, Sep., 11–28.
19.
Hiraoka, M., et al. (1985). “Statistical analysis of activated sludge process dynamics in a combined wastewater treatment plant.” Instrumentation and control of water and wastewater treatment and transport systems. Pergamon Press, New York, N.Y., 665–668.
20.
Huang, M. S., et al. (1986). “Fault diagnosis of hazardous waste incineration facilities using a fuzzy expert system.” Expert systems in civil engineering, C. N. Kostem and M. L. Maher, eds., ASCE, 30–37.
21.
Jenkins, D., Richard, M. G., and Daigger, G. T. (1986). Manual on the causes and control of activated sludge bulking and foaming. Ridgeline Press, Lafayette, Calif.
22.
Johnston, D. M. (1985). “Diagnosis of wastewater treatment processes.” Proc., Computer Applications in Water Resour., ASCE, 1, 601–606.
23.
King, J. P., and Mamdani, H. E. (1977). “The application of fuzzy control systems to industrial processes.” Automatica, 13, 235–252.
24.
Kramer, M. A. (1987). “Malfunction diagnosis using quantitative models with nonboolean reasoning in expert systems.” AIChE J., 33(1), 130–140.
25.
Lai, W. (1989). “A statistics‐based information and expert system approach for wastewater plant control,” thesis presented to the University of Wisconsin, at Madison, Wis., in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
26.
Maeda, K. (1984). “A knowledge based system for wastewater treatment process.” Proc. of 9th IFAC, International Federation of Automatic Control, 6, 3251–3256.
27.
Maeda, K. (1985). “An intelligent decision support system for activated sludge wastewater treatment process.” Instrumentation and control of water and waste‐water treatment and transport systems, R. A. R. Drake, ed., Advances in Water Pollution Control, Pergamon Press, London, England, 629–632.
28.
Mylopulos, J., and Levesque, J. H. (1984). “An overview of knowledge representation.” On conceptual modelling, M. Brodie, J. Mylopoulos, and J. Schmidt, eds., Springer‐Verlag, New York, N.Y., 3–17.
29.
Olsson, G., Stephenson, J., and Chapman, D. (1985). “Computer detection of the impact of hydraulic shocks on plant performance.” J. Water Pollut. Control Fed., 58(3), 954–969.
30.
Olsson, G. (1986). “Control strategies for the activated sludge process.” Comprehensive biotechnology: The principles, applications and regulations of biotechnology in industry, agriculture and medicine, M. Moo‐Young, ed., Pergamon Press, New York, N.Y., 1107–1119.
31.
Olsson, G. (1987). “Dynamic modeling, estimation and control of activated sludge systems.” Systems analysis in water quality management, Pergamon Press, New York, N.Y., 349–356.
32.
Patry, G., and Chapman, D., eds. (1989). Dynamic modelling and expert systems in wastewater engineering. Lewis Publishers, Chelsea, Mich.
33.
Patry, G., and Olsson, G. (1987). “Dynamic modeling and expert systems in waste‐water engineering.” Wastewater Technology Center Newsletter, Dave Chapman, ed., Environment Canada, Burlington, Ontario, 9, Nov.
34.
Ramsey, C. L., et al. (1986). “A comparative analysis of methods for expert systems.” Int. J. Man‐Machine Studies, 24, 475–499.
35.
Tanthapanichakoon, W., and Himmelblau, D. M. (1981). “Simulation of a time dependent activated sludge wastewater treatment plant.” Water Res., 15, 1185–1195.
36.
Tong, M. R. (1977). “A control engineering review of fuzzy systems.” Automatica, 13, 559–569.
37.
Tong, M. R., Beck, B. M., and Latten, A. (1980). “Fuzzy control of the activated sludge wastewater treatment process.” Automatica, 16, 695–701.
38.
Vassos, T. D. (1986). “Development of an activated sludge process control strategy using Bayesian and Markovian decision theory,” thesis presented to the University of British Columbia, at Vancouver, British Columbia, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
39.
Vitasovic, Z., and Andrews, J. F. (1987). “A rule‐based control system for the activated sludge process.” Systems analysis in water quality management, Pergamon Press, New York, N.Y., 423–432.
40.
Waterman, D. A. (1986). A guide to expert systems. Addison‐Wesley, Reading, Mass.
41.
Yu, V. L., et al. (1979). “Evaluating the performance of a computer‐based consultant.” Computer programs in biomedicine, 9, 95–102.
42.
Zadeh, A. L. (1965). “Fuzzy sets.” Inform. Contr., 8, 338–353.
43.
Zadeh, A. L. (1973). “Outline of a new approach to analysis of complex systems and decision process.” IEEE Trans. Systems, Man Cybernet., 3(1), 28–44.
44.
Zadeh, A. L. (1983). “Commonsense knowledge representation based on fuzzylogic.” IEEE Computer, Oct., 61–65.

Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Go to Journal of Environmental Engineering
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 116Issue 5September 1990
Pages: 890 - 909

History

Published online: Sep 1, 1990
Published in print: Sep 1990

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Authors

Affiliations

Wenje Lai
Member Tech. Staff, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL 60565
P. M. Berthouex, Member, ASCE
Prof., Dept. of Civ. and Envir. Engrg., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706

Metrics & Citations

Metrics

Citations

Download citation

If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.

Cited by

View Options

Get Access

Access content

Please select your options to get access

Log in/Register Log in via your institution (Shibboleth)
ASCE Members: Please log in to see member pricing

Purchase

Save for later Information on ASCE Library Cards
ASCE Library Cards let you download journal articles, proceedings papers, and available book chapters across the entire ASCE Library platform. ASCE Library Cards remain active for 24 months or until all downloads are used. Note: This content will be debited as one download at time of checkout.

Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.
ASCE Library Card (5 downloads)
$105.00
Add to cart
ASCE Library Card (20 downloads)
$280.00
Add to cart
Buy Single Article
$35.00
Add to cart

Get Access

Access content

Please select your options to get access

Log in/Register Log in via your institution (Shibboleth)
ASCE Members: Please log in to see member pricing

Purchase

Save for later Information on ASCE Library Cards
ASCE Library Cards let you download journal articles, proceedings papers, and available book chapters across the entire ASCE Library platform. ASCE Library Cards remain active for 24 months or until all downloads are used. Note: This content will be debited as one download at time of checkout.

Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.
ASCE Library Card (5 downloads)
$105.00
Add to cart
ASCE Library Card (20 downloads)
$280.00
Add to cart
Buy Single Article
$35.00
Add to cart

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Copy the content Link

Share with email

Email a colleague

Share