Bod Biosensor for Secondary Effluent From Wastewater Treatment Plants

Abstract

A BOD biosensor which uses irrunobilized yeasts for its receptor and a DO probe for its transducer has made it possible to measure BOD in wastewater in a short time and without any special analytical technique. Since being standardized as Japan Industrialized Standard (JIS) K 3602 in 1990. the BOD sensor has entered into a commercial stage. It has been reported that the BOD sensor is applicable to specific wastewater generated by the food industry, but it is unclear whether the BOD sensor is applicable to domestic wastewater, in particular. to secondary effluent from wastewater treatment plants. This paper discusses the applicability of the existing BOD sensor to domestic wastewater and the necessity of improving the existing BOD sensor. Based on the experimental evaluation of the actual samples in this paper, it was found that the BOD sensor requires modifications when it is applied to less biodegradable samples such as secondary effluents from wastewater treatment plants or river waters. Thus, several modifications were conducted. As a result, selections of microorganisms for the receptor and of BOD standard solutions for calibration resulted in improvement of applicability of the BOD sensor to less biodegradable samples. Using the renovated BOD sensor, satisfactory coincidence was observed between manually analyzed BOD5 and sensored BOD for secondary effluent and river water.

Biosensor for the Determination of Biochemical Oxygen Demand in Rivers

“…The composition of the medium was selected according to the analysis of the secondary effluents from the municipal sewage treatment plants in Japan (Murakami et al, 1978;Tanaka et al, 1994). The limited medium involved humic acid, lignin, tannic acid, gum arabic, and surfactant as carbon sources.…”

“…River waters and effluents usually contain refractory organic compounds, such as humic acid, gum arabic, lignin, tannic acid, and surfactant. Especially, these organic compounds account for over 50% in compositions of secondary effluents according to the publication by Tanaka (Tanaka et al, 1994). Therefore, arbitrarily selected refractory organic compounds, as reported in previously papers (Murakami et al, 1978;Tanaka et al, 1994), were studied.…”

“…Especially, these organic compounds account for over 50% in compositions of secondary effluents according to the publication by Tanaka (Tanaka et al, 1994). Therefore, arbitrarily selected refractory organic compounds, as reported in previously papers (Murakami et al, 1978;Tanaka et al, 1994), were studied. The constituents of artificial wastewater (AWW) per liter of distilled water are as follows: nitrohumic acid, 4.246 mg; gum arabic, 4.696 mg; NaLS, 2.427 mg; tannic acid, 4.175 mg; LAS, 0.942 mg.…”

“…A rapid and reliable method for BOD estimation was first developed by Karube et al (Karube et al, 1977b). Since then many kinds of microbial sensors instead of BOD 5 analysis have been reported (Kulys & Kadziauskiene, 1980;Lin et al, 2006;Riedel et al, 1990;Sakaguchi et al, 2003;Stand & Carlson, 1984;Tanaka et al, 1994;Yang et al, 1997;Yoshida et al, 2000). They generally consist of microorganisms immobilized on a porous membrane and an oxygen probe.…”

Microscale Biosensor for Measurement of Volatile Fatty Acids in Anoxic Environments

“…A wide range of large-scale biosensors for the measurement of available dissolved organic matter have been developed over the last 2 decades (11,18,19,23,24,26,29,30). These sensors are used to measure short-term biological oxygen demand (BOD) as an estimate of 5-day biological oxygen demand in wastewater.…”