Robust control of water quality in horizontal sub-surface flow wetlands using decentralized quantitative feedback theory based controller.

This paper addresses the regulation of water quality influencers such as Organic Nitrogen, Ammonia Nitrogen, Nitrate Nitrogen, Dissolved Organic Carbon and Dissolved Oxygen for a sub-surface flow horizontal wetland in a controlled environment. The plant uncertainty is quantified by using measurement data. The robust control of the process is achieved using a decentralized quantitative feedback theory based control strategy. The control structure also employs a feed-forward mechanism to minimize loop interactions and feedback control to ensure stability, tracking and disturbance rejection. The numerical simulations and hardware-in-loop implementation show that the performance specifications are robustly met. • The control of water quality deciding variables by using a constructed wetland • The parametric uncertainty is quantified using measurement data collected • A decentralized quantitative feedback theory based robust controller is adopted • Each loop is equipped with feed-forward controllers to minimize coupling effects • Performance is verified by numerical simulation and hardware-in-Loop validation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]