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This paper presents an operational Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation (HILS) framework that extends the classical Benchmark Simulation Model No 2 (BSM2) from offline simulation to real-time and accelerated execution environments. The proposed framework, BSM2-HILS, integrates a real-time process emulator, industrial Programmable Logic Controller-based operational control, a modular communication and data management layer, and cloud-based supervisory services, enabling realistic benchmarking of control strategies under real-time constraints. A configurable time-scaling mechanism allows both real-time operation and accelerated evaluation. The framework is validated through systematic experiments assessing numerical equivalence with the offline BSM2 benchmark, control benchmarking, and robustness under highly dynamic influent conditions. Results demonstrate that the proposed platform preserves BSM2 dynamics across a wide range of execution speeds while revealing practical limitations imposed by control, interface, and communication layers under extreme acceleration. The framework provides a reproducible and extensible foundation for operational benchmarking of advanced wastewater treatment control strategies in Industry 4.0 context.
Vasiliev et al. (Fri,) studied this question.