Using a Novel Algorithm Based on the Random Vector Functional Link Network and Multi-Verse Optimizer to Forecast Effluent Quality

The treatment of wastewater is a complicated biological reaction process. Reliable effluent prediction is critical in the scientific management of water treatment plants. This research proposes a soft sensor design strategy to address the issues above, Multi-Verse Optimizer (MVO)-based random vector functional link network (MVO-RVFL). The proposed approach is utilized to anticipate real-time effluent data obtained from the Benchmark Simulation Model 1 (BSM1). The results of the experiments demonstrate that the MVO methodology can successfully find the optimum input-hidden weights and hidden biases of the RVFL model while outperforming the original RVFL and other typical machine learning approaches in all types of influent datasets. In the situation of significant water quality variations, the use of the fusion process for model development was also investigated. The experimental results demonstrate that incorporating prior knowledge can effectively improve the model’s ability to cope with unexpected situations.