Background: Due to the rising demand for water, wastewater treatment processes (WWTPs) gain huge attention. However, operating WWTPs is complex due to the physical, chemical, and biological processes involved, and they often face issues like nonlinearity, unpredictability, and disruptions, which can impair control performance and cause instability.
Objective: To address these challenges, a fuzzy-based sliding-mode controller (FSMC) is proposed to improve control performance and stability.
Methods: To suppress the disturbances and uncertainties on controlling WWTP, fuzzy logic is incorporated with SMC. The FSMC parameters are optimally tuned by means of a JAYA optimization Algorithm depending on the tracking error and structure complexities. The proposed controller reduce disruptions and unpredictability by controlling the bioreactor, eases computational burdens by updating parameter values, and enhances control performance while minimizing chattering through the JAYA optimization technique.
Results: The performance analysis is done by comparing the proposed method with standard approaches. The investigation is conducted on WWTP with five pH reactors, pH underflow, pH overflow, and pH influent conditions. Error analysis shows that the FSMC has achieved the RMSE error of 0.23641, which is better than existing MAHPFSMC, WFSMC, GFSMC, SSFSMC, IBFSMC, IMBFSMC, OFSMC, WO, and SOSMC methods.