Contribution to dynamic simulation of activated sludge wastewater treatment plants

In Portugal, many wastewater treatment plants are presently operated according to predetermined schemes, with few concerns to variations of the activated sludge process and without optimizing its performance to achieve a better effluent quality. Little attention has been given to the activated sludge models as powerful tools for wastewater treatment process understanding, design, control and optimization. The main goal of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the activated sludge process and to the simulation of organic carbon removal based on ASM3. Monitoring campaigns were conducted in order to characterize the composition of flows from seven different sections of the wastewater treatment plant and to investigate the dissolved oxygen concentrations in the biological reactors. The dynamic simulation of the WWTP was confronted with several limitations related to the treatment plant performance and the desired stability for modeling was not verified. An alternative academic approach was performed as an attempt to understand the consequences of different operation methodologies, in terms of process efficiency.