Modeling of a large-scale wastewater treatment plant for efficient operation

Environmental legislations in the Western world impose stringent effluent quality standards for ultimate protection of the environment. This is also observed in Turkey. The current paper presents efforts made to simulate an existing 0.77 million m3/day conventional activated sludge plant located at Ankara, AWTP. The ASM1 model was used for simulation in this study. The model contains numerous stoichiometric and kinetic parameters, some of which need to be determined on case by case bases. The easily degradable COD (S(S)) was determined by two methods, physical-chemical and respirometric methods, namely. The latter method was deemed unreliable and rejected in the further study. Dynamic simulation with SSSP program predicted effluent COD and MLSS values successfully while overestimating OUR. A complete fit could only be obtained by introducing a dimensionless correction factor (etaO2 = 0.58) to the oxygen term in ASM1.