The MBR training plant

A membrane bioreactor plant your trainee is allowed to break: control room, levers, twelve failure buttons, lab procedures, scored scenarios and OTIS.

At simulator.beedy.ca/wwtp/. No account needed; free during beta.

What it is

A membrane bioreactor plant running on biological process equations (ASM1) on our server, at 60 times real speed. The trainee runs it from a control room, reads the lab, keeps the logbook, and deals with failures, without any risk to a real plant.

First steps

1. The Plant tab opens first. Press Run. Scroll to zoom the process view, drag to pan, double-click to reset.
2. On the right panel, change the influent (flow, BOD₅, TSS, TKN, TP, temperature…) or pick a preset: design, cold winter, shock load, frozen.
3. Adjust the setpoints: dissolved oxygen, recycle ratio, waste sludge rate, permeate rate, chemical dosing (alum, soda ash) and membrane cycles.
4. Watch the key indicators against their targets: effluent BOD₅, TSS, NH₄-N and TP; MLSS, F/M, sludge age; membrane pressure (TMP).

Failures to practise

Twelve incident buttons: air scour blower failures on either train, alum or caustic pump failure, influent shock load, cold shock, RAS pump failure, alum overdose, alkalinity crash, toxic shock, fibre breach on train 1, waste sludge valve stuck open, and Clear all incidents. Random events also happen on their own: a bad septage delivery, membrane fouling, a blower trip, storm inflow, low reagent, probe drift.

The tabs

• Plant: the control room, levers, per-train operator console, chemical stations with draining tanks, the septage truck at the pad.
• Laboratory: 14 step-by-step test procedures with a timer (pH, MLSS, DO, alkalinity, COD, ammonium, nitrogen, phosphorus, nitrite, nitrate, TSS, VSS, sampling), equipment guides, theory modules, a 27-question quiz, 8 scored scenarios (winter ammonia breakthrough, TMP runaway, toxic shock, permeate turbidity spike, foam, alum pump failure, filamentous bulking, end-of-life membrane clean) with printable transcripts, and seven calculators (F/M, sludge age, alum dose, membrane permeability, SOUR, MLSS, nitrification demand).
• Otis: chat and voice with OTIS. In Advice mode, each recommended move becomes a task on the operator's list. The Auto mode is an autopilot demonstration on this training plant only: OTIS takes the controls so the trainee can work the lab and truck receiving. On a real plant, OTIS advises and people decide.
• Trends: the plant's historian and live charts.
• Operator: the shift view, field readings, logbook and handovers, truck receiving, incidents and maintenance.

Trade shows

Cinema mode (the 🎬 button, or add ?cinema=1 to the address) runs the plant hands-free with scripted events. Press Esc to leave.

What is stored

Your language, theme, operator name, quiz scores and readings stay in your browser. The logbook, handovers and lab book of this demonstration are on our server and shared by every visitor: do not write anything private there.

When the Suite is the better tool

The simulator is where you practise. The Plant Management Suite is where the work is recorded, on a plant that runs whether you watch or not. Its Troubleshooting module is the newer way to analyse an incident.