2.1.2 The BOD Test: Chapter 2 - Organic Material and Bacterial Metabolism 11
2.1.2 The BOD Test: Chapter 2 - Organic Material and Bacterial Metabolism 11
2.1.2 The BOD Test: Chapter 2 - Organic Material and Bacterial Metabolism 11
11
(2.3)
= 0.68
(2.4)
Equation (2.4) indicates that, for a kBOD value of 0.23 d-1, 68 percent of the biodegradable material is oxidised during the incubation period of 5 days. It is important to note that Eqs. (2.3 and 2.4) are empirical relationships, developed for sewage and that they do not apply necessarily to other waste waters.
12 The value of the organic material degradation constant kBOD depends on the type of waste water used. In the Netherlands, for municipal waste water the variation of the kBOD value is estimated between 0.15 to 0.8 d-1 (Roeleveld and van Loosdrecht, 2002). Although labour intensive, it is possible to calculate the kBOD value from a series of BOD determinations, as is demonstrated in Figure 2.1
500 450
Biodegradable COD COD of (inert) endogeneous residue
-1
kBOD = 0.35 d -1
kBOD = 0.23 d -1
kBOD = 0.11 d -1
Figure 2.1 BODt,20 as a function of the incubation time for different kBOD values As a result of the decay of micro-organisms, part of the influent COD will in the end remain as an inert endogenous residue (refer also to Section 2.4.1) and will not exhibit an oxygen demand. Therefore the value of BOD will always be lower than the biodegradable COD value (BCOD). Typically BOD for biodegradable waste water is about 86% of BCOD. The BCOD line is shown in Fig. 2.1 as well. To indicate the effect of different kBOD values on the result of the BOD determination, the theoretical BODt,20 curves for kBOD = 0.11 and 0.35 d-1 (with the same BOD value of 400 mg O2.l-1) are plotted in Fig. 2.1. It now becomes evident that the use of a fixed ratio to link BOD5 to BOD could easily lead to large errors, when the waste waters are different in composition. To illustrate this point, for different kBOD values the expected BOD value is calculated based on the BOD5 values in Fig. 2.1. For a true kBOD value of 0.11 d-1, the BOD5 value is 168 mg O2.l-1 and using the assumed ratio of BOD5/BOD of 0.68, this yields an expected BOD value of 249 mg O2.l-1. For a true kBOD value of 0.35 d-1 this would yield a BOD of 486 mg O2.l-1 It can be concluded that the reproducibility of the BOD test is much lower than that of the COD test. The data in Table 2.3 (Heukelian, 1958) are an example. The BOD determination of several solutions of single compounds with known concentrations was carried out. The observed standard deviations ranged from 13 to 62 percent of the average values: this is much larger than those determined for the COD test. Table 2.3 also shows clearly that after 5 days the biological oxidation of organic material is still incomplete. In the last column, the ratio between the experimental BOD5 value and the theoretical COD concentration is calculated. The experimental oxygen demand was only 36 (ethyl acetate) to 75 percent (glucose) of the demand for complete oxidation.
Chapter 2 - Organic Material and Bacterial Metabolism Table 2.3 Experimental values of the BOD5 values for selected compounds, the standard deviation and the ratio between the experimental BOD5 and the theoretical COD Component n0 of tests BOD5 g BOD5.g Acetic acid Sodium acetate Methyl alcohol Ethyl alcohol Glycerine Formaldehyde Acetone Glucose Ethyl acetate Phenol 9 7 11 12 6 5 9 10 6 5 0.62 0.33 0.86 1.25 0.75 0.57 0.89 0.80 0.66 0.76
-1
13
BOD5/CODt g BOD5.g-1 CODt 0.58 0.42 0.57 0.60 0.62 0.44 0.40 0.75 0.36 0.74
% 29 54 13 18 19 53 62 56 44 14
0.18 0.18 0.11 0.23 0.14 0.30 0.55 0.45 0.29 0.25