Formalised Model Representation for Wastewater Systems

A fundamental pre-condition for the application of simulation is the availability of reliable models. Particular problems arise in the application of simulation for integrated process design of complex wastewater systems. The models necessary for this task have to include different sub-processes such as biological wastewater treatment, anaerobic digestion processes and also models of the control system. To deal with this problem this paper describes an approach on how (1) to follow strict mass conservation principles during model development and (2) how to use formalised model representation methods for model creation, exchange and analysis. The adaptation of the XML-based Systems Biology Mark-Up Language (SBML) to the area of wastewater modelling is proposed. The implementation of this approach in a simulation environment for practical control engineering tasks is demonstrated.