Intelligent system for improving dosage control

Resumo

Coagulation is one of the most important processes in a drinking-water treatment plant, and it is applied to destabilize impurities in water for the subsequent flocculation stage. Several techniques are currently used in the water industry to determine the best dosage of the coagulant, such as the jar-test method, zeta potential measurements, artificial intelligence methods, comprising neural networks, fuzzy and expert systems, and the combination of the above-mentioned techniques to help operators and engineers in the water treatment process. Current paper presents an artificial neural network approach to evaluate optimum coagulant dosage for various scenarios in raw water quality, using parameters such as raw water color, raw water turbidity, clarified and filtered water turbidity and a calculated Dose Rate to provide the best performance in the filtration process. Another feature in current approach is the use of a backpropagation neural network method to estimate the best coagulant dosage simultaneously at two points of the water treatment plant. Simulation results were compared to the current dosage rate and showed that the proposed system may reduce costs of raw material in water treatment plant.