Simulation of wastewater treatment plant within integrated urban wastewater models.

In the federal state of Hesse in Germany the application of an integrated software modelling framework is becoming part of the planning process to attain legal approval for the operation of combined sewer systems. The software allows for parallel simulation of flow and water quality routing in the sewer system and in receiving rivers. It combines existing pollution load model approaches with a simplified version of the River Water Quality Model No. 1 (RWQM1). Comprehensive simulation of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is not considered yet. The paper analyses alternatives for the implementation of a WWTP module to model activated sludge plants. For both primary and secondary clarifiers as well as for the activated sludge process concepts for the integration into the existing software framework were developed. The activated sludge concept which uses a linearized version of the well known ASM1 model is presented in detail.