Multi-grained cascade forest for effluent quality prediction of papermaking wastewater treatment processes

The real time estimation of effluent indices of papermaking wastewater is vital to environmental conservation. Ensemble methods have significant advantages over conventional single models in terms of prediction accuracy. As an ensemble method, multi-grained cascade forest (gcForest) is implemented for the prediction of wastewater indices. Compared with the conventional modeling methods including partial least squares, support vector regression, and artificial neural networks, the gcForest model shows prediction superiority for effluent suspended solid (SS_eff) and effluent chemical oxygen demand (COD_eff). In terms of SS_eff, gcForest achieves the highest correlation coefficient with a value of 0.86 and the lowest root-mean-square error (RMSE) value of 0.41. In comparison with the conventional models, the RMSE value using gcForest is reduced by approximately 46.05% to 50.60%. In terms of COD_eff, gcForest achieves the highest correlation coefficient with a value of 0.83 and the lowest root-mean-square error value of 4.05. In comparison with the conventional models, the RMSE value using gcForest is reduced by approximately 10.60% to 18.51%.