In this work, we consider the distributed economic model predictive control (EMPC) of a wastewater treatment plant described by Benchmark Simulation Model No. 1 and compare its performance with two commonly used control methods. The plant is decomposed into two subsystems based on the topology of the process, the requirement in our distributed control system design and the computational considerations. A local EMPC controller is designed for each subsystem. Two different designs are considered. In the first design, the centralized model is used in each subsystem EMPC controller design; and in the second design, a subsystem model is used in each subsystem EMPC design. The performance of these two distributed EMPC designs are compared with a centralized model predictive control (MPC) scheme and a centralized EMPC scheme from different aspects including effluent quality, operating cost, and computational efficiency. The simulation results demonstrate that the distributed EMPC with each subsystem EMPC controller designed based on the entire system model is more favourable in terms of control performance. (C) 2018 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.