A generic sensor model for wastewater treatment plant control

This paper investigates the idea of creating a generic sensor model for low-level design and analysis by simulation in the wastewater treatment industry. Typical simulators disregard the need for accurate sensor models because measurement data is assumed to be an accurate representation of the real time situation. However, sensor measurements in the harsh wastewater environment are very prone to corruption and faults, which make the knowledge of their behaviour important for low-level control applications and, hence, sensor validation procedures are essential to ensure stable closed loop operation. An example of how the generic sensor model can be used to develop a dissolved oxygen (DO) sensor model is shown and a brief review of PCA for detecting faults in sensors is given. A comparison with a physical sensor is also provided.