Advanced monitoring and control of anaerobic wastewater treatment plants: Fault detection and isolation

In this paper, a fault detection and isolation approach using fuzzy logic i s described for on-line analysis of problems occurring in anaerobic digesti on processes, the measurements available on the process are preprocessed to build a vector of fault residuals indicating the magnitude of the problems . This vector is classified into a prespecified category (i.e., a class) wh ich is a state of the system. according to discrimination fuzzy rules. Thre e different types of classes were defined in a hierarchical structure : sen sors faults, sub process faults and process faults. This approach was devel oped to handle in real time both technical and biological problems. Demonst ration of the practical interest of this study was made using real life exp eriments and large improvement of the reliability end safety of the process was obtained, thus optimizing the overall wastewater treatment.