MODELLING AND CALIBRATION OF THE FULL SCALE WWTP WITH DATA SCARCITY

Predictability of any full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) model is highly dependent on availability of sufficient influent data. Considering the fact that realistic data collection and further analysis of collected samples from influent of WWTP is an expensive and time-consuming process, application of available techniques for analyzing, completing and generating influent data for WWTP with data scarcity problem seems inevitable. In this study Activated Sludge Model No.1 (ASM1), implemented in GPS-X software has been used to model biological wastewater treatment process in Rosta WWTP, situated in North West of Italy. Although high seasonal variation has been observed in quantitative and qualitative influent data, combination of using harmonic functions and analysis of the wastewater generation mechanisms techniques has been successfully applied to solve the incomplete influent dataset problem. Furthermore to translate the available common quality measurements into ASM family components, the simplifying solutions presented in STOWA calibration protocol have been used. Based on the achieved modelling results more accurate and extensive sampling campaigns have been proposed to the managing company.