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Updated: May 12, 2026

A Novel Bioreactor for High Density Cultivation of Diverse Microbial Communities
Published on: December 25, 2015
Effluent quality improvement in sequencing batch reactor-based wastewater treatment processes using advanced control
Indranil Dey1, Seshagiri Rao Ambati2, Prashant Navnath Bhos1
1Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Warangal 506004, Telangana, India.
Abstract:
The treatment of wastewater is highly challenging due to large fluctuations in flowrates, pollutants, and variable influent water compositions. A sequencing batch reactor (SBR) and modified SBR cycle-step-feed process (SSBR) configuration are studied in this work to effectively treat municipal wastewater while simultaneously removing nitrogen and phosphorus. To control the amount of dissolved oxygen in an SBR, three axiomatic control strategies (proportional integral (PI), fractional proportional integral (FPI), and fuzzy logic controllers) are presented. Relevant control algorithms have been designed using plant data with the models of SBR and SSBR based on ASM2d framework. On comparison, FPI showed a significant reduction in nutrient levels and added an improvement in effluent quality. The overall effluent quality is improved by 0.86% in FPI in comparison with PI controller. The SSBR, which was improved by precisely optimizing nutrient supply and aeration, establishes a delicate equilibrium. This refined method reduces oxygen requirements while reliably sustaining important biological functions. Focusing solely on the FPI controller's performance in terms of total air volume consumption, the step-feed SBR mechanism achieves an excellent 11.04% reduction in consumption.
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