Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.

1998, 37, 3625-3630 3625

PROCESS DESIGN AND CONTROL

Back-propagation Neural Network Adaptive Control of a

Continuous Wastewater Treatment Process
Mei-J. Syu* and Bow-C. Chen
Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University,
Tainan, Taiwan 70101, Republic of China

Wastewater treatment processes and technology have been investigated for several decades and
have almost been completed up to date. In this study, a chemical method was applied to treat
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the wastewater. Instead of real wastewater, benzoic acid and water were mixed as the waste-
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water since different concentrations of dissolved benzoic acid could result in different chemical
oxygen demands (COD). Hydrogen peroxide and ferrous chloride were both added to treat the
wastewater in order to meet the standards of 1998 environmental regulation in Taiwan. pH
was found to be a major factor affecting the coagulation condition of the suspended particles
during the treatment process. Back-propagation neural network was applied, and the purpose
of the control was to provide the minimum amount of reagents to reach the required COD. The
pump rates for adding hydrogen peroxide and ferrous chloride were controlled. The neural net-
work was of a time-delayed mode, and its structure was properly determined, with the only
output node being the predicted H2O2. The concentration of the added reagents was compared
as well.

Introduction activated sludge process by using the observed micro-

Wastewater treatment has been studied for many
decades. There are a number of methods proposed to
treat the wastewater from different industrial plants
up to now. In general, the treatment technique can be
classified into chemical methods and biochemical meth-
ods. The chemical method was chosen in this work
because most wastewater contained certain organic
waste compounds which interfered with the measure-
ment of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and also was
usually not biodegradable. The main purpose of this
study is to establish an on-line control of the wastewater
treatment system. The chemical method is mainly by
oxidation and coagulation to achieve treatment effect.
Hence, it can save a lot of time when compared to the
biotreatment method. In this work, coagulation was
formed by adding Fe3+ under low-pH conditions. Qasim
et al.1 applied such a method to form coagulation and
found a better result could be obtained by adding Fe3+
and lime softening under high-pH conditions.
The on-line estimation and control system of a waste-
water treatment plant has been studied for decades.2,3
Novotny et al.4 described the concept of the modeling
and real-time control strategy of the wastewater treat-
ment system as well as the treatment facilities and
applications. PLC (programmable logic controller) plays
an important role in the wastewater treatment plant.5
An expert system has also been applied to the waste-
water treatment. A knowledge-based expert system is
often used to diagnose the treatment system.6 Ichikawa
et al.7 developed a diagnosis expert system for the
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
S0888-5885(98)00165-1 CCC: $15.00 © 1998 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 07/28/1998
scopic biota and measured data such as pH, dissolved
oxygen (DO), etc. However, it has the limitation in
controlling a wastewater treatment plant by establish-
ing the expert rules based on an expert system. Fuzzy
logic proposed by Zadeh in 1965 has attracted a lot of
attention. Its practical applications on wastewater
treatment have also been studied.8 Tsai et al.9 con-
trolled the effluent suspended solids (SS) and COD of
an activated sludge process by a fuzzy approach, which
is an alternative to the expert system. Fuzzy logic has
become a method often used to control the treatment
process. Nevertheless, regarding the difficulties in
acquiring and representing knowledge of the charac-
teristics in these plants when using the above tech-
niques, it has led to another approach, which is the
artificial neural network.10
In 1943, the original concept of artificial neurons was
first proposed by McCulloch and Pitts. Since 1980,
there have been a lot of investigations on neural
networks. Recently, artificial neural networks have also
been applied to wastewater treatment processes. The
major work being done is the neural network on-line
control of treatment processes. Krovvidy et al.11,12 has
reported different AI approaches for studying the se-
quence of the wastewater treatment systems. The
Hopfield network, a network structure proposed by
Hopfield13,14 for solving optimization problems from the
concept of energy function, was applied to obtain the
optimum sequence of the treatment units in a waste-
water plant.15 The treatment system was designed as
two phases. In the first phase, a learning algorithm was
used to extract the knowledge rules from the database.
In the second phase, these rules were then compiled for
3626 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 37, No. 9, 1998
selecting, combining, and arranging the treatment units.
With its precise identification ability, the back-propaga-
tion neural network proposed by Werbos in 197416 has
interested many researches.17,18 Its applications have
been distributed in many different types of systems.19-25
In 1991, Baba et al.26 used a back-propagation network
to search for the correlation between the coagulant
injection rate and the affecting factors such as water
qualities (opacity, temperature, pH, etc.) and floc image
properties. Yet, there are still very limited applications
of neural networks on wastewater treatment. In our
previous work, the back-propagation neural network has
been successfully applied to the dynamic identification
and on-line control of the fermentation systems.27-29
Likewise, its ability on the on-line control of the
wastewater treatment system was examined in this
study. Certain factors of either network parameters or
operating conditions affecting the performance of the
neural network on-line control system were studied in
this work, which have not yet been reported in the
literature. The aim of this work was at the neural
network adaptive control study of the wastewater
treatment system rather than at the development of a
treatment method. Hence, the very general method,
Fenton’s method, was used to treat the water.
Experimental Section
Chemical Oxidation. Fenton’s method was applied
to treat wastewater. The method includes the chemical
oxidation of the waste content in water and the coagula-
tion of the suspended particles after the oxidation.
FeCl2 is to catalyze the reaction of H2O2 for the forma-
tion of a hydroxyl radical. The organic compounds in
the wastewater can thus be oxidized by the hydroxyl
radical. At the same time, Fe2+ is reduced to Fe3+ and
therefore Fe3+ can form a complex with the organic
compounds to achieve a coagulation effect.
COD Analysis. COD of the wastewater was ana-
lyzed by a K2Cr2O7 reflux heating method. The water
sample was mixed with K2Cr2O7 and H2SO4. It was
then placed on heat. Cr6+ of Cr2O72- was first reduced
to Cr3+ by the organic compounds of the water. The
rest of Cr2O72- was then titrated by Fe2+ of Fe(NH4)2-
(SO4)2‚6H2O (FAS) with Ferroin as the indicator.
Analysis of H2O2 and Fe2+. Both H2O2 and Fe2+
can be titrated by 0.1 N KMnO4. The sample for
analysis was diluted with water first and then added
with H2SO4. It was then titrated by KMnO4 until the
sample solution turned purple. The H2O2 or Fe2+
content of the sample can then be calculated from the
titration amount of KMnO4.
Jar Test. The jar test was performed with a 200-
mL wastewater sample. All the samples were agitated
with the same stirring speed. The water was treated
with FeCl2 and H2O2 first. After completion of oxida-
tion, an anion resin was added to coagulate and hence
settle down the suspended particles. The water sample
was stirred for 30 min to achieve complete reaction and
coagulation. Then, the coagulated particles were al-
lowed to settle down. The clear solution was then
sampled for COD measurement. The jar test was used
to determine certain factors such as minimum reaction
time or the required amount of reagents that can be
applied to the following on-line control system.
Calibration of the Control Pumps. The addition
of H2O2 and Fe2+ was controlled by two peristaltic
pumps which had external control portions. The digital
signal of the computed control action from a PC was
transformed into an analogue signal by the DA portion
of an AD/DA card imbedded in the PC. The analogue
signal was in a voltage range of 0-5 V. The voltage
signal was then sent to switch on the pumps for feeding
action. The pumps had to be calibrated first in order
to obtain precise control actions. A linear correlation
was made between the voltage sent to the pump and
the feeding rate of the pump.
Setup of the Wastewater On-Line Control Sys-
tem. Setup of the whole system is shown in Figure 1.
The simulated wastewater of varied CODs was fed into
the system continuously. H2O2 and Fe2+ were pumped
respectively by two peristaltic pumps to the system by
receiving the transferred signal computed from a PC.
The ratio of the added amount of H2O2 versus that of
ferrous chloride was kept at 1:2. The ratio of 1:2 was
determined from experiments. To add the two reagents
under such a ratio would achieve almost complete
reaction of H2O2 and hence leave no interruption on
COD measurement. Once the amount of H2O2 was
predicted, the required amount of ferrous chloride would
thus be determined accordingly. The duration of the
control action was set as 15 s, and it was the pump rates
being controlled. The treatment system was operated
in a continuous mode. The treated wastewater was
pumped out continuously and collected as samples once
every 30 min for COD measurement. The standard
time required for heating during COD measurement
was 2 h. To save time for the study of on-line control,
the heating time and therefore the sample measurement
time was limited to 30 min. The liquid level of the
control system was maintained constant, and the work-
ing volume was 600 mL.
BPN Algorithm. Transfer function is a key compo-
nent in constructing a neural network. A function of
saturation form x/(1 + |x|) instead of the sigmoidal
function with an exponential term was used in this
work. Delta-learning rule with a momentum term was
applied as back-propagation learning. The momentum
term was added to improve the convergence and speed
up the learning. The error learning signal of the
network can thus be produced from the delta-learning
rule.
With the function of x/(1 + |x|), the error learning
signal es+1 from an output layer to a hidden layer is
k
expressed as
1
es+1
k ) (dk - ok) (1)
(1 + | ∑j (ωs+1 s 2
kj hj )|)
in which hsj is the output from the hidden layer. dk and
ok are the desired and computed outputs, respectively.
With es+1
k , the update of the weights ωkj
s+1
connecting
the output layer and hidden layer can be calculated.
Similarly, the error learning signal esj from the hid-
den layer to the input layer can be derived accordingly
[ ]
1 1
esj ) ∑ (dk - ok) ωs+1
kj
∑i
(1 + | 2 k
ωsjixi|) (1 + | ∑j ωs+1 s 2
kj hj |)
(2)
in which xi is the input. With esj , the update of the

Figure 1. Setup of the on-line control of a wastewater continuous treatment system.
Figure 2. COD after treatment vs reaction time.
weights ωsji connecting the output layer and the hidden
layer can also be calculated.
Results and Discussion
Reaction Time. The first step of the treatment is
oxidation. To reduce the COD of the water by oxidation
is a fast chemical method; in other words, the reaction
time constant is small. Benzoic acid dissolved in water
was used as wastewater because the solution caused the
COD value. In addition, using benzoic acid simulated
wastewater was also convenient for judging the control
and treatment effect. The water was treated for differ-
ent periods of time, and then the COD after treatment
was measured. The result is shown in Figure 2. It can
be expected that, along with an increase of reaction
time, the reaction should approach completion. Hence,
the COD level should become lower.
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 37, No. 9, 1998 3627
Figure 3. Time schedule of sedimentation under different pHs.
During the first 10 min of treatment, the COD level
dropped very fast and the decreasing rate slowed
afterward. The initial COD affected the time required
to reach the completion of oxidation. Different initial
CODs ranging from 300 to 400 ppm were treated
respectively, and 30 min was found to be enough to
oxidize water to below 100 ppm of COD. However, if
the content of the water was changed or the initial COD
of the water was higher than 400 ppm, the minimum
time required for sufficient oxidation may be different.
pH. pH was found to be a major factor for determin-
ing the coagulation condition of the suspended particles.
The coagulation was inspected under different pHs as
shown in Figure 3. The suspended particles coagulated
first when treated with anion resins. The coagulation
occurred randomly and therefore different sizes of
coagulants formed. Sedimentation occurred as a result
of gravity of the coagulants. However, there is still a
3628 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 37, No. 9, 1998
Figure 4. Effect of the reagent concentration on the treatment
result.
major size distribution among the coagulants. There-
fore, a major front end during the sedimentation was
clearly observed. At a moderately acidic pH such as 5.0,
the coagulation of the suspended particles was faster
and could be inspected. However, further increasing the
pH to 6.0 did not yield a better sedimentation result.
On the other hand, at an acidic pH such as 4.0, the
coagulation would take a much longer time for the
particles to settle down at the bottom of the tank.
Nearly no clear front end or no major size distribution
of particle groups could be observed during the coagula-
tion at pH 4.0, which was an indication of bad sedimen-
tation conditions. Hence, pH should be properly ad-
justed to obtain better coagulation of the particles, i.e.,
a better treatment effect. A pH of 5.0 can be concluded
as the optimal pH value for best coagulation and was
applied during the following studies.
Concentrations of Reagents. How the concentra-
tions of added reagents affect the COD of the water is
shown in Figure 4. Instead of the required amount of
H2O2 being added, the effects of concentrations are
discussed. The added volume of H2O2 for each water
sample under study cannot be different too much and
also the H2O2 cannot be added too much, or the water
samples would be diluted in different proportions and
even diluted too much. To avoid complications caused
from other factors, the concentration was chosen as the
subject of discussion. For the water samples of the same
initial COD, different H2O2 concentrations can treat the
water to different CODs. According to the environmen-
tal regulation, the COD concentration of the effluent
wastewater has to be below 100 ppm in 1998 and on.
To treat the water below 100 ppm, 200 ppm H2O2 is
required. The treatment effect gradually levels off for
H2O2 concentrations higher than 300 ppm. It may be
concluded that, to treat the water below 100 ppm in a
batch mode, the minimum required H2O2 concentration
is 200 ppm. The Fe2+ concentration was 100 ppm
correspondingly since the ratio of H2O2/Fe2+ being added
to the treatment system was always kept at 1:2 during
this work. For water with an initial COD value of 360
ppm, with H2O2 concentration of less than 200 ppm, the
COD of water cannot be effectively treated to below 100
ppm. On the other hand, treatment with a H2O2
concentration of higher than 200 ppm such as 300, 400,
500, and 600 ppm would not be necessary. The data
from the batch mode of treatment can then provide a
preliminary reference for checking the rationality of
continuous operation of the on-line control system of
wastewater treatment.
Neural Network Structure for the On-Line Con-
trol of a Wastewater Treatment System. A back-
propagation neural network (BPN) was applied to this
system. A time-delayed type of network was chosen for
the inherent time delay of the measurement system.
Including the data from previous sampling times in the
input nodes forms a time-delayed neural network. BPN
has successfully demonstrated its performance from
practical on-line control of fermentation systems as long
as network parameters and operating factors of the
practical systems were properly chosen.28,29 A transfer
function of x/(1 + |x|) proposed in previous work27 was
applied and tested from the control performance in this
work.
Regarding the dynamic characteristics of the waste-
water treatment plant, a moving window mode of
supplying data to the neural network for learning was
suggested. The neural network identification/control
was trained in a dynamic mode during the on-line
operation. For each learning, a fixed number of training
data was provided to the network. Therefore, once new
data were added as time moved on, the oldest data
would be removed. Such a mode of supplying data can
allow the neural network to efficiently learn from the
data and save learning time during the on-line opera-
tion. For every practical system dynamics, there exists
an optimal moving window. Different sizes of moving
window were tested against on-line experiments. The
moving window of size 15 was determined to be the best
length for neural network identification and control of
this wastewater treatment system. Hence, the neural
network was used as a dynamic learner/predictor when
the control action was not called up. When the time
for the control action was up, the network was then
switched to be a controller. The manipulation of the
neural network for an on-line control system is ex-
plained in Figure 5, which provides a general frame.
The network structure of 3-4-1 is shown in Figure
6. The four hidden nodes were estimated and deter-
mined by training the network structures of different
input nodes from off-line experimental data. The output
node was determined to be the predicted control action,
which was the predicted amount of reagents. During
the training phase, the COD of the feeding water, the
COD of the collected effluent water sample, and the
amount of H2O2 added at previous control time can be
provided as the basic elements of the input nodes. To
search for an optimal network structure for the on-line
control system, the BPNs of 3-4-1, 5-4-1, and 7-4-1
were tested and compared, respectively. Among these
structures, with the BPN of 7-4-1, a more precise and
stable control result was obtained. A BPN of 7-4-1
includes seven inputs, four hidden nodes, and one
output. The seven inputs are CODi(t-3), CODi(t-2),
CODi(t-1), H2O2(t-2), H2O2(t-1), COD(t-3), and COD-
(t) when the network acted as a learner/predictor. When
the network was switched to be a controller, the input
element of COD(t) was replaced by the set point of 90
ppm, which was the COD of treated effluent water. The
set point was 10 ppm below the standard COD (100
ppm) of the environmental regulation because the
experimental variation was counted. With the set point
of 90 ppm, it can be sure that if the control were
effective, the COD of the effluent water would be
qualified. The CODi(t-3) is the measured COD of the

Figure 5. Manipulation of the neural network for an on-line control system.
Figure 6. Network structure of 7-4-1 for the wastewater
treatment system.
feeding water sampled at three previous times from
current sampling time. Similarly, CODi(t-2) is the
measured COD of the feeding water sampled at two
previous times from current sampling time. CODi(t-
1) is defined likewise. COD(t-3) is the measured COD
of the collected effluent water sample at three previous
times. COD(t) is defined likewise. H2O2(t-2) is the
amount of H2O2 added to the treatment system at two
previous times from current time. H2O2(t-1) is defined
similarly. The predicted output node is H2O2(t), which
is the predicted amount of H2O2 that should be added
at current time for the next control time interval.
Obviously, the system exhibited three time delays on
measurement. For each measurement of the collected
effluent water, it required 30 min to collect the sample
and at the same time agitate with H2O2, FeCl2, and
anion resins and another 30 min for heating, and then
the sample was prepared for titration. The complete
data were obtained and provided for neural network
learning. Totally, for each learning cycle, the time for
each measurement and network computation required
a time between 1 and 1.5 h. Hence, the maximum time
required for each sampling and measurement was
approximately 1.5 h, which corresponded to three time
delays. Three time delays on measurement occurred
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 37, No. 9, 1998 3629
Figure 7. Neural network on-line adaptive control result of the
wastewater treatment system.
and the input nodes included the measurement of three
previous times.
Figure 7 shows the on-line learning and control result
from the 7-4-1 BPN. The CODs of the feeding water
at different times were randomly scheduled and made
up by mixing benzoic acid and water with peristaltic
pumps. The COD random schedule was generated from
the random function. The control set point was set at
90 ppm, which is indicated by a straight line on the
figure. The set point was chosen to be smaller than but
near 100 ppm from the consideration of measurement
errors. In Figure 7, the controlled COD of the effluent
water only exhibited a small fluctuation around the set
point. Hence, this figure demonstrates the success of
applying the back-propagation neural network to the
on-line adaptive control of a simulated wastewater
continuous treatment system if proper parameters are
chosen.
3630 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 37, No. 9, 1998
Conclusions
Hydrogen peroxide and ferrous chloride (mainly fer-
rous ion) were jointly added to treat the COD in order
to develop a method for meeting the requirement (<100
ppm) of 1998 standards of the environmental regulation
in Taiwan. After completion of oxidation, an anion resin
was added to coagulate and hence settle down the
suspended particles. pH was found to be a major factor
for determining the coagulation condition of the sus-
pended particles. Hence, pH should be properly ad-
justed to obtain a better coagulation of the particles. A
pH of 5.0 was determined experimentally as the best
pH for coagulation. The neural network structure was
determined as 7-4-1 and was of a time-delayed type.
The seven input nodes are COD(t), COD(t-3), CODi(t-
1), CODi(t-2), CODi(t-3), H2O2(t-1), and H2O2(t-2)
when the network was operated during the learning
phase. If the network was switched to the control
phase, only COD(t) was changed to the set point of COD
(90 ppm). The only output node was the predicted
amount of H2O2 that should be added at current
controlling time. The neural network was trained in a
dynamic mode. A moving window type of learning data
with a fixed size was provided for each learning batch.
A combination of the network structure of 7-4-1 and
a window size of 15 can achieve the best control
performance. Neural network adaptive control has been
demonstrated for its ability in carrying out the on-line
control of the continuous wastewater treatment system
successfully as long as the network parameters and
operation conditions are properly chosen.
Acknowledgment
Part of the work granted from Wastewater Treatment
Research Department, Environmental Science and Tech-
nology Division, Union Chemical Laboratories, Indus-
trial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), is appreci-
ated. The water treatment protocol provided by Ms. S.
F. Shu is also appreciated. Discussions with Dr. Y. H.
Huang and Ms. S. S. Chou of ITRI were truly helpful.
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IE9801655