Modeling and nonlinear control of volatile fatty acids in an upflow anaerobic fixed bed biofilm reactor (UAFBR)

SUMMARY

In this article a robust regulation strategy of volatile fatty acids is proposed by an anaerobic digestion process. The proposed strategy is a control law via nonlinear feedback obtained by input-output linearization that allows the completion of the control goals despite the modeling errors (uncertainties in the kinetics of the reactions) and the actuator restrictions. The experiments were conducted with an pilot fixed anaerobic reactor and ascending flow (UAFBR) with an active volume of 0.947 m3 fully equipped, used for the treatment of residual waters coming from a wine distillery in Narbonne, France. With the goal of validating the models used, simulated and experimental results are presented and discussed. The performance parameters of the controller under the AM2 and ADM1 models (up time, establishment time, over-impulse and stationary state error) obtained from the numeric simulations that prove the efficiency and applicability of the proposed control strategy.