Abstract
Activated sludge process is the most common method for biological treatment of industrial and municipal wastewater. One of the most important parameters in performance of activated sludge systems is quantitative monitoring of biomass to keep the cell concentration in an optimum range. In this study, a novel method for activated sludge quantification based on image processing and RGB analysis is proposed. According to the results, the intensity of blue color in the macroscopic image of activated sludge culture can be a very accurate index for cell concentration measurement and R2 coefficient, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) which are 0.990, 2.000, 0.323, and 13.848, respectively, prove this claim. Besides, in order to avoid the difficulties of working in the three-parameter space of RGB, converting to grayscale space has been applied which can estimate cell concentration with R2 = 0.99. Ultimately, an exponential correlation between RGB values and cell concentrations in lower amounts of biomass has been proposed based on Beer-Lambert law which can estimate activated sludge biomass concentration with R2 = 0.97 based on B index.
Highlights
Use of activated sludge (AS) is the most common biological method for wastewater treatment (Gernaey et al, 2004)
Biomass concentration is the key parameter in activated sludge wastewater treatment systems which must be monitored during the process in order to reassure the optimum performance of treatment system
The method proposed in this study shows acceptable results in activated sludge quantification without needing expensive or complicated devices or skills
Summary
Use of activated sludge (AS) is the most common biological method for wastewater treatment (Gernaey et al, 2004). AS is a complex of viable microorganisms which is generally composed of mainly heterotrophic bacteria which can utilize organic matters, measured as biological oxygen demand (BOD) or chemical oxygen demand (COD), in the wastewater to survive and remove them from wastewater, (Garakani et al, 2011; Ratkovich et al, 2013; Ju and Zhang, 2015). Among all, controlling AS biomass concentration in the optimum range is most vital, because any deviation from the optimum range may result either in poor BOD removal or release of suspended solids into the effluent stream of the wastewater treatment plant which may cause microbial pollutions (Gernaey et al, 2001). Numerous attempts have been carried out for monitoring of biomass concentration in the AS systems described here.
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