Modelling and prediction of aeration efficiency of the venturi aeration system using ANN-PSO and ANN-GA

Abstract

The significance of this study involves the optimisation of the aeration efficiency (AE) of the venturi aerator using an artificial neural network (ANN) technique integrated with an optimisation algorithm, i.e., particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA). To optimise the effects of operational factors on aeration efficiency by utilising a venturi aeration system, aeration experiments were conducted in an experimental tank with dimensions of 90cm×55cm×45cm. The operating parameters of the venturi aerator include throat length (TL), effective outlet pipe (EOP), and flow rate (Q) to estimate the efficacy of the venturi aerator in terms of AE. A 3–6-1 ANN model was developed and integrated with the PSO and GA techniques to find out the best possible optimal operating variables of the venturi aerator. The coefficient of determination (R2), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE) determined from the experimental and estimated data were used to assess and compare the performance of the ANN-PSO and ANN-GA modelling. It is shown that ANN-PSO provides a better result as compared to ANN-GA. The operational parameters, TL, EOP, and Q, were determined to have the most optimum values at 50 mm, 6 m, and 0.6 L/s, respectively. The optimised aeration efficiency of the venturi was found to be 0.105 kg O2/kWh at optimum operational circumstances. In fact, the neural network having an ideal design of (3-6-1) and a correlation coefficient value that is extremely close to unity has validated the results indicated above.