Modelling and Control  of Environmental Systems

Second semester, 5th year, Curriculum in Environmental Engineering

Content:

• Ecology: Basic concepts in ecology and ecological modelling
• Population Dynamics: Birth and death processes. Single species growth, harvesting of renewable resources. Prey-predator models: Lotka-Volterra, Rosenzweig-MacArther, Kolmogorov models. Multi-species modelling: trophic chains and webs. Primary production, primary and secondary consumers, eltonian pyramid. Structural analysis and stability of complex ecosystems.
• Continuous-Flow Reactor Modelling: CSTR, Plug-Flow, Dispersion. A case study of a tubular reactor with axial dispersion
• Parameter Calibration: Search algorithms for nonlinear dynamical models, an improved flexible polyhedron algorithm. Variance of estimated parameters. Application to Monod and Haldane kinetics.
• River Quality Modelling: Basic mechanisms of river self-purification. Streeter-Phelps and Dobins models. More complex chemical and ecological models. Pollutant and nutrient dynamics. Dissolved Oxygen dynamics. Algae growth and oxygen production.
• Biological Wastewater Treatment: Fundamentals of microbial dynamics and energetics. Pollutant/Microorganisms interactions (aerobic, anoxic, anaerobic). Requirements for carbon and nutrient removal. Activated sludge: Process schemes: completely mixed, plug-flow, SBR, nutrient removal. Anaerobic digestion: process dynamics and plant configurations. Operational control of wastewater treatment processes.
• Fuzzy System Modelling Introduction to fuzzy sets and systems, fuzzification, implication, connectives, defuzzification, rule-based fuzzy models with different approaches (Mamdani and Sugeno). Cluster analysis for the classification of ecological data. Fuzzy C-means clustering. Integration between fuzzy clustering and fuzzy models.

Reference textbooks:
S. Marsili-Libelli "Modelli Matematici per l'Ecologia", Pitagora Editore, Bologna, 1989.
Orhon, D., Artan, N. "Modelling of Activated Sludge Systems", Technomic Publ. Co., 1994.
Chapra, S.C. "Surface Water-Quality Modeling", McGraw-Hill, 1997.