Hybrid modelling of anaerobic wastewater treatment processes

This paper presents a hybrid approach for the modelling of an anaerobic dig estion process. The hybrid model combines a feedforward network, describing the bacterial kinetics, and the a priori knowledge based on the mass balan ces of the process components. We have considered an architecture which inc orporates the neural network as a static model of unmeasured process parame ters (kinetic growth rate) and an integrator for the dynamic representation of the process using a set of dynamic differential equations. The paper co ntains a description of the neural network component training procedure. Th e performance or this approach is illustrated with experimental data.