Benchmarking procedure for full-scale activated sludge plants

To enhance development and acceptance of new control strategies, a standard simulation benchmarking methodology to evaluate the performance of wastewater treatment plants has recently been proposed. The proposed methodology is, however, for a typical plant and that works under typical loading and environmental conditions. Thus, benchmarking a full-scale plant working under different situations is still a problem that needs to be solved. This paper proposes a data based approach to benchmark any specific full-scale activated sludge plant used for carbon and nitrogen removal and using real design, operational and performance data. The advantage of the proposed approach over the "one-typical-plant" approach, is that it takes into account the very specific design and operational characteristics of the plant that will be benchmarked. A real-world illustrative example is also presented in this paper. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.