An efficient approach to automate the manual trial and error calibration of activated sludge models

An efficient approach is introduced to help automate the rather tedious manual trial and error way of model calibration currently used in activated sludge modeling practice. To this end, we have evaluated a Monte Carlo based calibration approach consisting of four steps: (i) parameter subset selection, (ii) defining parameter space, (iii) parameter sampling for Monte Carlo simulations and (iv) selecting the best Monte Carlo simulation thereby providing the calibrated parameter values. The approach was evaluated on a formerly calibrated full-scale ASM2d model for a domestic plant (located in The Netherlands), using in total 3 months of dynamic oxygen, ammonia and nitrate sensor data. The Monte Carlo calibrated model was validated successfully using ammonia, oxygen and nitrate data collected at high measurement frequency. Statistical analysis of the residuals using mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE) and Janus coefficient showed that the calibrated model was able to provide statistically accurate and valid predictions for ammonium, oxygen and nitrate. This shows that this pragmatic approach can perform the task of model calibration and therefore be used in practice to save the valuable time of modelers spent on this step of activated sludge modeling. The high computational demand is a downside of this approach but this can be overcome by using distributed computing. Overall we expect that the use of such systems analysis tools in the application of activated sludge models will improve the quality of model predictions and their use in decision making.