PeCOD Case Study #23
Real-Time Detection of BOD Spikes – MO1000
BOD Monitoring in Wastewater Treatment Plants
Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) require active monitoring of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) to ensure compliance with local regulations and to maintain the health of the biological processes that treat wastewater. WWTPs rely on active biological processes at various stages of the treatment process to break down pollutants, requiring a certain supply of organic material to keep the biology at an active, steady state. If the plant receives too much incoming organic material, or material that is incompatible with the existing biology in the treatment processes, it can lead to a plant upset. A plant upset can cause serious damage to the treatment processes and limit the effectiveness of the plant’s overall treatment. In extreme cases, this can lead to plants discharging untreated wastewater into natural water systems. This can severely impact aquatic ecosystems, and pose health risks to communities that rely on the water system for recreation or drinking water.
Need for Rapid BOD Analysis
BOD is the traditional analysis method for determining the loading of organic material throughout a treatment plant. Operators will determine BOD for the purposes of reporting plant performance to local regulatory authorities. Additionally, BOD results are often useful for optimizing plant performance. However, traditional BOD analysis takes five days to complete, which limits its usefulness for real-time monitoring. Because of this delay, BOD cannot be used to actively monitor a plant. As a result, there is a need for rapid BOD analysis methods to provide plant operators with real-time data on their BOD loading.
MANTECH’s PeCOD® Analyzer
MANTECH’s PeCOD® Analyzer provides rapid and accurate BOD results in only 10-15 minutes, making it the optimal tool for treatment plant operators looking to actively monitor BOD loading. Recently, a utility in England purchased the MO1000 PeCOD® Analyzer to monitor the influent BOD at a rural treatment plant that discharges into a natural water system. The utility was facing challenges with an industrial facility within their catchment area that was illegally dumping wastewater with significantly elevated BOD. In addition, it contained organic material in a form not suitable for the type of treatment at the WWTP. The BOD spikes were difficult to detect because the illegal discharging was occurring during off-hours where no operators were present. As a result, the BOD spikes were leading to many plant upsets.
Real-Time BOD Monitoring
After installing the MO1000 PeCOD®, they were able to autonomously monitor the incoming BOD loading to the plant 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This provided valuable insight into the hours when no operators were present. With this access to real-time data, they were able to detect several instances of illegal discharging during off-hours. With this evidence, the utility successfully brought the industrial facility owners to court and held them accountable. As a result, any future discharges were within compliance limits and proactively reported to the utility. The MO1000 PeCOD® Analyzer enabled the utility to prevent future upsets, providing significant cost savings and protecting the natural water systems in the area.
Definitions:
- PeCOD® is registered trademark owned by MANTECH
- The core technology is a patented photocatalytic electrochemistry method for oxidizing the organics in real time and measuring the resultant COD
- The patents related to the peCOD technology are owned by MANTECH
