Application of neural network for simulation of upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor performance

Abstract

Up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors are being used with increasing regularity all over the world, especially in India, for a variety of wastewater treatment operations. Consequently, there is a need to develop methodologies enabling one to determine UASB reactor performance, not only for designing more efficient UASB reactors but also for predicting the performance of existing reactors under various conditions of influent wastewater flows and characteristics. This work explores the feasibility of application of an artificial neural network-based model for simulating the performance of an existing UASB reactor. Accordingly, a neural network model was designed and trained to predict the steady-state performance of a UASB reactor treating high-strength (unrefined sugar based) wastewater. The model inputs were organic loading rate, hydraulic retention time, and influent bicarbonate alkalinity. The output variables were one or more of the following, effluent substrate concentration (Se), reactor bicarbonate alkalinity, reactor pH, reactor volatile fatty acid concentration, average gas production rate, and percent methane content of the gas. Training of the neural network model was achieved using a large amount of experimentally obtained reactor performance data from the reactor mentioned above as the training set. Training was followed by validation using independent sets of performance data obtained from the same UASB reactor. Subsequently, simulations were performed using the validated neural network model to determine the impact of changes in parameters like influent chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration and hydraulic retention time on the reactor performance. Simulation results thus obtained were carefully analyzed based on qualitative understanding of UASB process and were found to provide important insights into key variables that were responsible for influencing the working of the UASB reactor under varying input conditions.

Back propagation neural network (BPNN) prediction model and control strategies of methanogen phase reactor treating traditional Chinese medicine wastewater (TCMW)

“…It cannot be used practicably (Sucheta Sinha et al, 2002;Martin et al, 1995). To a great extent, the operation of anaerobic reactors needed an accurate mathematical model to offer suggestions and guidance in setting up models.…”

The use of artificial neural network (ANN) for modeling of COD removal from antibiotic aqueous solution by the Fenton process

“…Application of ANN to solve environmental engineering problems has been reported in many articles. ANNs were applied in biological wastewater treatment [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] and physicochemical wastewater treatment [27][28][29][30]. However, few studies on applications of ANN in advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have been reported [31][32][33].…”

Prediction of Effluent Treatment Plant Performance in a Diary Industry Using Artificial Neural Network Technique

“…The test data set were not shown to the network during training; they were used after the training is finished in order to test the network for its generalization ability, and to monitor network's performance. Using the Run/ Save Best menu of the mat lab nn tool, the training was stopped at regular intervals and the performance (generalization ability) of the networks were tested by presenting the test set to the trained networks [12][13][14]. Training was continued until a plateau was reached in the RMS prediction error of the test set.…”