Risk Assessment Module of the IWA/COST simulation benchmark: Validation and extension proposal.

The IWA/COST simulation benchmark platform has been widely used to evaluate and compare different activated sludge control strategies. The IWA/COST simulation benchmark provides performance indices like the effluent water quality, operating costs and controller performance (Copp, 2002), all of them quantitative. However, these indices do not take into account the biomass separation related problems which at present cannot be quantitatively modelled. A qualitative Risk Assessment Module adaptable to any simulation benchmark platform has been developed for the activated sludge systems. As a consequence, and in order to improve the quantitative performance indices, lately the anaerobic digestion model number 1 (ADM1) has recently been implemented in the benchmark platform, BSM2, (Jeppsson et al. 2006) to provide a plant-wide model for simulation. The Risk Assessment Module thus needs to be extended to also cope with anaerobic digestion problems of qualitative nature. The proposal and preliminary intentions for both extension and validation are discussed in the present paper.