Comparison of Intelligent and Traditional Control Systems in Wastewater Treatment Process Control

Ion-exchange-based wastewater treatment processes exhibit nonlinear and time-varying dynamics, making the control of total dissolved solids (TDS) and water hardness a complex task. Conventional Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) controllers often show limited performance under such conditions due to fixed tuning parameters and linear assumptions. To address these limitations, this study presents a comparative evaluation of traditional and intelligent control strategies for regulating TDS and water hardness through influent flow control. A classical PID controller is compared with fuzzy logic and Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) controllers using a unified MATLAB/Simulink simulation framework. The control performance is evaluated based on dynamic response characteristics, including rise time, settling time, and overshoot. For TDS control, the PID controller exhibits a rise time of 15.9 s and a settling time of 50.9 s, while the fuzzy logic controller improves the response with a rise time of 13.6 s and settling time of 44.1 s. The ANFIS controller achieves the fastest response, with a rise time of 8.31 s and a settling time of 27.1 s. Similar trends are observed for water hardness control, where the PID controller shows a rise time of 17.0 s and settling time of 55.8 s, the fuzzy logic controller reduces these values to 12.3 s and 40.4 s, respectively, and the ANFIS controller further improves performance with a rise time of 9.23 s and settling time of 30.3 s. The overshoot values for all controllers remain comparable, within the range of approximately 4.4–5.0%. The results clearly demonstrate that intelligent control strategies, particularly ANFIS, provide significantly faster convergence and improved dynamic performance compared to conventional PID control. The reduced settling time implies lower control effort and decreased energy consumption, highlighting the potential of intelligent controllers for efficient and reliable industrial wastewater treatment applications.

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