AN EXPERT-SYSTEM FOR SELECTING AND SEQUENCING WASTE-WATER TREATMENT PROCESSES

Wastewater treatment system design involves selecting and sequencing v arious treatment processes. The design becomes complicated when a larg e number of processes and various contaminants are considered. In this work, an expert system is developed to find an appropriate treatment process design for a given waste stream. The knowledge base of the sys tem is established with a treatability database to select suitable tre atment techniques for specified contaminants and concentration levels. Also, a preliminary fuzzy logic based approach is proposed to express the user's preference of treatment techniques in a linguistic farm. T he preference is defined on the basis of the treatment efficiency and the cost of a technique. The system is intended to serve as a decision support tool for a designer to determine optimal treatment process se quences for various contaminants at different concentration levels. Fi nally, the developed system is demonstrated in a case study for a chem ical processing waste stream. Copyright (C) 1996 IAWQ. Published by El sevier Science Ltd.