Efficiency Assessment of Wastewater Treatment Plant of Tabriz Using Artificial Intelligence Models

Introduction Because of shortage of water resources in the world, it seems necessary to refine wastewater, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas such as Iran. Correct treatment, management and the control of refining process needs to investigate about effective parameters in this process. Therefore, because of the uncertainty and complexity in finding qualitative parameters and their relationship, artificial intelligence such as a fuzzy model (FL) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) were used in this study for modeling the behavior of Tabriz wastewater treatment plant. Tabriz city as the capital of the East Azarbaijan Province is the most industrialized and urbanized city in Northwest Iran (Fig. 1). The sewage of Tabriz city, including industrial and domestic wastewaters, collects gravitationally the wastewaters and conveys them into the wastewater treatment plant. It is located in Qaramalek District, four kilometers away in west of downtown on the southern side of the Ajichay river and on the lowest part of the city in an elevation of at 1334 meters above sea level. The wastewater treatment plant is designed in