Specifications of Modular Internet-Based Remote Supervision Systems for Wastewater Treatment Plants

1 LBE-INRA avenue des étangs 11100 Narbonne – France 2 Institute of Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Santiago de Composela – Spain 3 CCLRC, Business & Information Technology Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilcot OX11 0QX – United Kingdom 4 SPES,via Broganelli n°84, 60044 Fabriano – Italia 5 INRIA, Comore Project, BP93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex – France Abstract. WasteWater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) are complex dynamic systems that are difficult to manage and that require long-term expertise and constant monitoring for efficient operation. In addition, in the case of vinasses treatment, producers are often small and medium entreprises (SMEs) that cannot afford the cost of a human expert available on a daily basis even though the environmental impact of a poor treatment of this wastewater is high. The TELEMAC European project aims at providing a set of tools to guarantee processes stability and efficiency, to decrease the functioning costs and to improve the use of derivative products. To this end, a local supervision system will be in charge to select the best controller adapted to the current situation according to the available sensors and to the process objectives. A set of models and controllers will be available for each state of the plant. The local supervision system is completed by a remote internet-based supervision system which collects the data from several plants and runs a database diagnosis. The present paper details the overall architecture and the supervision system specifications that will allow any authorised person to access to a plant and to interact with the running diagnosis scheme, both at the local and at the remote levels.