Plant-wide assessment of alternative activated sludge configurations for biological nutrient removal under uncertain influent characteristics.

This study presents an extensive plant-wide model-based assessment of four alternative activated sludge (AS) configurations for biological nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) removal under uncertain influent loads and characteristics. Zeekoegat wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in South Africa was chosen as case study due to its flexible design that enables operation in four different AS configurations: 3-stage Bardenpho (A2O), University of Cape Town (UCT), UCT modified (UCTM), and Johannesburg (JHB). A metamodeling based global sensitivity analysis was performed on a steady-state plant-wide simulation model using Activated Sludge Model No.