Dedicated Observer Scheme for Fault Diagnosis and Isolation in Instruments of an Anaerobic Reactor

This paper proposes a dedicated observer scheme for fault diagnosis and isolation in instruments of an anaerobic reactor. An asymptotic observer is proposed for the estimation of the concentration of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), the concentration of anaerobic biomass and the produced biogas flow rate for an anaerobic reactor. The proposed observer is based on the ADM1 for applications in continuous UASB reactors and its main feature is that allows the monitoring of a dynamic balance between anabolic (biological synthesis) and catabolic (methane production) fluxes without biomass measurements in the reactor. Experimental results are shown using the ADM1 for the treatment of wastewater with high organic matter content from a brewery. Validation is carried out using real data obtained from a 2.1 L laboratory scale Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor.