Fuzzy PID Control of the PH in an Anaerobic
wastewater Treatment process
Kang JiayuWang MengxiaoXiao Zhongjun and Zhao Yan
Shannxi University of Science & Technology
Xian, China
E-mail: kangjiayu@sust.edu.cn
AbstractPH is an important environmental factor to anaerobic
bacteria in anaerobic treatment system. Especially in the final
anaerobic process stage, the methane bacteria need the optimal
PH range from 6.8 to 7.2. According to the nonlinearity and large
time-delay of PH control process, a novel method based on fuzzy
PID control is proposed here, and corresponding simulations are
realized to make comparison with the methods of traditional PID,
fuzzy control and fuzzy PID. The results show that fuzzy PID has
the optimal performance such as responsibility, stability and anti-
disturbance.
Keywords-Anaerobic;PH;MATLAB;Fuzzy PID
I. INTRODUCTION
Anaerobic treatment is a microbiological process for the
degradation of organic matter. The active micro-organisms all
belong to the group of anaerobic bacteria that are able to, and
in most cases, can only exist in an environment that excludes
oxygen. The anaerobic degradation of organic material is a
stepped process. Each step consists of distinct types of
anaerobic bacteria. The degradable materials are through
various intermediates, all finally converted into biogas. Only
during this last step, the methane production, the pollution
(COD) is removed from the wastewater [1]. The organically
bound carbon disappears out of the water into the methane and
CO2. In this context occupy the methane bacteria a key
position, they are responsible for this last step.
Whenever the formation of methane is limited this will
show with the accumulation of fatty acids (especially acetic
acid) [2]. Acetic acid will also become inhibitory for the
system but at higher (measurable) concentrations of 10meg/l
and up.
For optimal anaerobic treatment, one should take into
account the environmental conditions like: temperature, PH,
nutrients and toxic substances. Methane producing bacteria are
more sensitive as compared to the acidifying bacteria. A
negative change in any of these conditions may result in an
insufficient degradation of volatile fatty acids. However,
among the environmental factors described above, the PH
control is both a key point and a difficult point for the control
of the system.
978-1-4244-3894-5/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE
II. PH CONTROL IN THE ANAEROBIC TREATMENT SYSTEM
A. Affect of pH on anaerobic degradation
The optimum PH for the anaerobic process is from 6.8 to
7.2. Changes in PH that affect the process are when the PH has
been below 6.5 or above 7.8. The more extreme the PH has
been outside the optimal range and the longer the exposure
period, the more bacteria are inhibited or even killed.
In order to enhance the reliability of the system, acidifying
preparation and methane production are implemented in two
independent storage tanks respectively, namely, a preparation
pool and an anaerobic reactor. The PH of wastewater is firstly
adjusted in the preparation pool, and then the wastewater is
sent to the anaerobic reactor; in this way, the sensitive methane
bacteria are protected, in case of abrupt change of the
environment. For control of the PH in the system, an automatic
dosing system is installed and strong acid (HCL) and strong
base (NaOH) are adopted as neutralizing liquid in the project.
B. Basis and the Difficult Point of PH Control
As shown in the acid-base neutralization curve [3], the
changes at the two ends of the curve are gentle, that is to say,
the PH varies very little with the addition of strong acid (or
strong base); however, the sensitivity is very high around the
neutral point, and the PH is to change dramatically even when a
little strong acid (or strong base) is added in. the sensitivity is
very high near the neutral point, while is extremely low at the
place far from the neutral point, and it has been proven by
experiments that the nonlinearity of a strong acid-strong base
neutralization process is more obvious than that of a weak acid-
strong base process.
As for the pH control system in anaerobic wastewater
treatment, the target range of PH is required to be controlled
within 6.8-7.2, which is just located in the vicinity of the
neutral point of the neutralization curve, thus the sensitivity of
change is high; on the one hand, a controller is required to have
relatively high control precision, on the other hand, control
difficulty is raised as the controller becomes more sensitive to
lagging.
The pH control of the anaerobic wastewater treatment
system is an indispensable measurement item; however, it is
difficult to control, for there are numerous phenomena that can
not be described quantitatively. The main reasons are as
follows:
1
 Wastewater may be either acidic or basic at different
moments; therefore, two neutralization reagents are
needed. The PH in the neutralization reaction has
typical nonlinearity [4-5].
The acidic and basic ingredients contained in
wastewater are complex, which causes the pH curve of
the measured object to be difficult to determine. The
concentration of wastewater can fluctuate in a large
range, which also brings about large perturbation.
There is pure lagging at the mixing, measuring and
other links in the PH control process [6-7], so that the
regulated amount fails to reflect the perturbation borne
by the system in time; even if a measuring signal
reaches an adjustor and the adjustor receives a
regulatory signal to take action instantly, it is not until
after a pure lagging period that the regulated amount
can be concerned and controlled. Therefore, such a
process will inevitably generate a more significant
overshoot and a longer control period. The existence of
pure lagging also contributes to the difficulty of PH
control.
III. SIMULATION OF THE PH CONTROL SYSTEM
A. Model building of pH control process in the anaerobic
wastewater treatment system
For the reasons described above, it is necessary to carry out
preliminary model building to a concerned object before a PH
control proposal is put forward so as to facilitate the research
and to further study the characteristics of the object.
If the relation between the flow rate u of a neutralization
flow and the flow rate F of a process flow in the neutralization
process is assumed to be that: uF, the following input/output
relation can be worked out [8]:
dX
V = u FX (1)
dt
T ( pH ) = X (2)
Wherein: F represents the flow rate of the process flow; u
represents the flow rate of the neutralization flow; V represents
the volume of the preparation pool; X represents the state
variable of the model; T (PH) represents the back-titration cure
of the process flow, the nonlinearity of the process is just
contained in the back-titration cure T (PH) of the process flow,
and the T (PH) is related to ingredients and concentration of all
chemical substances added in the preparation pool; if all
chemical ingredients in the whole system are known, the
nonlinearity of the process can be expressed as follows:
n
A(pH ) + a i (pH )c i
i =1 (3)
n
=X
a (pH) x
i =1
i i
Wherein: n represents the number of the ions in the
preparation pool, ci represents the ion concentration of the i th
kind of process flow, and xit represents the concentration of the
i th kind of neutralizing liquid,
A(pH) = 10 ( pHsv ) 10 ( pHsv 14) (4)
a i (pH) Represents an acid-base weight factor, and it is
equal to -1 for strong acid and +1for strong base. Therefore,
when there are only strong acid solution and strong alkaline
solution, the concentration of solution can be directly
combined; only when there are weak acid and weak base, a
weight factor, ai ( pH sv ) , needs to be multiplied. The
required volume of solution when it reaches a set point is
n
determined by a weight sum, that is, a (pH)x
i =1
i i
. The weight
sum is named as a strong acid equivalent which can directly
reflect the amount of the neutralizing agent required for
adjusting the pH to a set value, and it can be taken as a control
objective and has larger practical significance than the PH
value.
In the process of neutralization titration, the difference
value between an actually measured PH and a set value is in
line with a non-linear conversion process, and the numeral
value is [9-10]:
Y = T ( PH SV ) T ( PH ) (5)
The process is dynamic balance output of PH; as long as
there is a one-to-one relation between the PH and T (PH), the
PH is controlled to be PHsv, which is equivalent to the control
of Y, and the Y is set to be 0. In this way, the control problem
of PH is converted into a linear problem.
The following study on PH control is based on the formula
(1) and the formula (2) described above.
B. Building a mathematical model of pH
According to the preliminary model building of the
neutralization process above, a first order model can be
obtained:
dX
V = u FX & T ( pH ) = X
dt
The study on the PH control is based on the above two
formulas. When the pump is fully started, F is a fixed value
and is taken as a constant. The formulas are subject to Laplace
transformation to obtain the following transfer function:
1 (6)
G p (S) =
Vs + F
Given the pure lagging caused by the pipeline and the
detection process of a measuring instrument as well as a delay
factor, the transfer function is converted into:
2
 1 when the set value is 7; wherein the ordinate axis represents
G p (S) = e s (7)
Vs + F
The formula (7) shows the model of the PH neutralizing
process; according to the actual situation, the parameters in the
formula are respectively as follows:
V = 102m3 F = 250m 3 / h = 0.069 m 3 / s = 4s
All the parameters are written into the formula (7) which is
simplified into a standard form:
PH, the horizontal axis represents time and the unit is
second(s). The comparison between the two response curves
shows that: the PID response curve has relatively slow raising
speed even in high overshoot and is basically stable until
reaches the position of 200s; however, the fuzzy response curve
achieves a steady state just at the position of 100 s when no
overshoot exists. As the PID response has integrating element,
there is no steady state error in the system; however, the fuzzy
response curve has no integral, so that certain steady state error
will occur.

K 0 s 14.49 (8)
G p (S) = e = e 4s
Ts + 1 1478.26s + 1

In formula (8): Proportional gain K 0 = 14.49 ; Equivalent

Figure 1. Simulation structure diagram of PID control
volume lagging time in the process: T = 1478.26s .

C. Structure of the pH fuzzy PID control system

The conventional double-input single-output fuzzy
controller takes error and error rate as input variables, and it is
similar to a PD controller. Owing to lack of integral action, the
fuzzy controller has poor performance for eliminating steady
state error of the system, and high control precision is difficult Figure 2. Simulation structure diagram of fuzzy control
to be achieved. However, with the integral regulation effect, a
conventional PID adjuster can theoretically control the steady
state error of the system to be zero, thus achieving better
function on eliminating steady error. Therefore, the fuzzy
controller is preferably combined with the PID controller; when
an error is larger than a threshold, fuzzy control is adopted to
achieve better transient performance; however, when an error is
smaller than the threshold, PID control is employed to obtain
better steady state performance.
By integrating the advantages of fuzzy control and PID Figure 3. Simulation response curve of PID control
control, fuzzy PID control determines the controlled variable
according to control rules and on-line detection results instead
of a precise mathematical model. Furthermore, fuzzy PID
control can well solve the difficult problems in an anaerobic
biological treatment system such as difficult precise model
building, large lagging, strong disturbance and multiple
variables.

IV. SIMULATION OF PID CONTROL, FUZZY CONTROL AND

FUZZY PID CONTROL SYSTEM OF PH

A. Simulation structure diagram and the step response curve
of the pH control system
In order to analyze and compare the pH control effect of
several control methods, MATLAB simulation software is
adopted in the essay to respectively carry out simulation to PID
control, fuzzy control and fuzzy PID control.
The simulation structure diagrams of PID control and fuzzy
control of PH are as shown in Fig.1 and Fig.2 respectively.
Their step response curves are as shown in Fig.3 and Fig. 4
Figure 4. Simulation response curve of fuzzy control
In order to obtain a response curve both with desired
dynamic performance and steady state performance, the
advantages of PID control and fuzzy control have to be
combined to form a fuzzy PID control system. The simulation
structure diagram of the fuzzy PID control system of pH is as
shown in Fig 5: the step response curve when the set value is 7
is as shown in Fig.6.

3
 Figure 5. simulation structure diagram of fuzzy PID control
Figure 6. Simulation response curve of fuzzy PID control
B. Simulation anti-disturbing response curve of PH control
system
For carrying out further study on the anti-disturbing
performance of the system under the three pH control patterns,
step disturbance is applied on the ring of the structure diagram
at t=300s, and response curves corresponding to the three
control algorithms are obtained as shown in Fig.7, Fig.8 and
Fig.9.
Figure 7. Anti-disturbing response curve of PID control
Figure 8. Anti-disturbing response curve of fuzzy control
From the obtained response curves, we can know that the
effect of the fuzzy PID control is the most ideal; when
disturbed, the steady state value of the fuzzy control algorithm
will alter; however, the PID control algorithm and fuzzy PID
control algorithm can recover; moreover, the fuzzy PID control
has the best anti-disturbing performance.
Figure 9. Anti-disturbing response curve of fuzzy PID control
V. CONCLUSION
PH is an important environment factor to anaerobic
wastewater treatment, but the nonlinearity and large time-delay
of PH adjust process make it difficult to control.
This paper builds up a mathematical model of PH, and then
proposes a novel method based on fuzzy PID control.
Comparing with corresponding simulations with the methods
of traditional PID, fuzzy control and fuzzy PID, we can see
that: the PID control algorithm and fuzzy control algorithm
both have their own advantages, and fuzzy PID algorithm can
achieve the best control effect and facilitate engineering
application by integrating their advantages. Fuzzy PID control
has the optimal performance such as responsibility, stability
and anti-disturbance.
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