Multi-agent reinforcement learning-enhanced autonomous calibration method for wastewater treatment modeling: Long-term validation of a full-scale plant

Wastewater modeling using an activated sludge model (ASM) has been used in water industries but is still known as the difficult and challenging model for full-scale wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) due to its mathematical nonlinearities and the complex interactions between the ASM model parameters. This study suggests a novel autonomous calibration method for the ASM model using multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) which can search the feasible parameter spaces and automatically calibrate the kinetic parameters of the ASM model. Eight kinetic parameters in the ASM-soluble microbial product (ASM-SMP) model are selected to be calibrated for describing the biological nutrient removal processes. A game abstraction mechanism based on a two-stage attention network (G2ANet)—one of the MARL algorithms—dynamically suggests the calibrated values of the eight parameters to describe the activities of microorganisms by considering the biological interactions between the parameters. The G2ANet automatically decides the kinetic parameter values by observing the influent characteristics of a target plant without any guidance by the operators. The G2ANet-enhanced calibrated model is satisfactorily accurate, showing good agreement with measured values of effluent chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total nitrogen (TN) concentrations; it decreases the modeling errors by 87 % and 58 % for COD and TN, respectively. Its performance is additionally evaluated by analyzing the biological process rates of the biomass from the auto-calibrated model. Moreover, its reliability guarantees its feasible application to a real WWTP by verifying its calibrated biological characteristics under the varying different influent conditions for seasonal months. [Display omitted] •Autonomous calibration using MARL was suggested for the dynamic ASM model of a WWTP.•G2ANet calibrated the kinetic parameters of an ASM-SMP considering the interactions.•Modeling errors for effluent COD and TN were decreased by 87 % and 58 %, respectively.•Calibrated biological process rates were analyzed according to seasonal trends.