Water Quality - BOD & Effluent Monitoring

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Chelsea Technologies Group is addressing the challenges of effective monitoring of effluents for both water treatment process control and in natural waters with the introduction of the new low cost UviLux BOD Indicator.

 

The UviLux BOD Indicator enables in-situ, real-time, reporting of BOD within both natural water systems and water processing plants. The monitor detects fluorescent proteins that are inherent within sewage and slurry and provides an output in BOD equivalent units. The principle behind the measurement is the excitation of Tryptophan-like fluorescence within UV wavelength band, which has been shown to correlate with both BOD and bacterial contamination. An internal calibration factor is used to convert the Tryptophan-like fluorescence measured to the reported BOD equivalent value in units of mg/L. The use of fluorescence provides signal detection sensitivity far superior to optical absorption methods currently in use, while the real-time reporting of BOD equivalence enables the measurement to be used for process control, which is not possible with conventional 5 day BOD laboratory techniques.


Process Control within Water Treatment Works
The UviLux BOD Indicator can be applied to a number of processes within both water supply and water recovery processes to assist in the assessment of loading and efficacy. Applications within Waste Water Treatment Works include monitoring primary and secondary stages as well as final effluent monitoring prior to release from the plant.  The UviLux BOD Indicator can be used to assess loading to the WWT site from abstracted waters as well as assessment of recycled waters within the plant.  In both applications the real-time BOD data obtained from the sensor can be used to implement energy saving adjustments to the processes.

 

Outside the treatment works the UviLux BOD Indicator can be applied in assessing and locating cross-over of Grey and Black Water pipes and open water courses.


Environmental Monitoring 
The UviLux BOD Indicator can also provide effective monitoring of streams, rivers, estuaries and coastal regions to detect outflow events from waste water treatment works (such as CSOs) and farm slurry.  The challenges in monitoring such events have been driven within the USA by the EPA Beach Act and within Europe by the EU Bathing Waters Directive, which will introduce new tighter regulation in 2015.


Applications of UviLux BOD Indicator include:

  • Effluent contamination monitoring
  • Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) Indicator
  • Combined Sewage Overflow (CSO) and Fish Kill investigations
  • Foul and surface sewer misconnection detection
  • Water catchment surveys
  • Coastal effluent monitoring


Other Monitoring Parameters 
The UviLux BOD Indicator is part of the range of UviLux UV fluorometers available from CTG which also allow detection of hydrocarbons, CDOM and optical brighteners.  These UV fluorometers are part of the wider Lux range of fluorometers from CTG which all benefit from a large range of common accessories, providing cost-effective solutions to many deployment scenarios.

UviLux BOD Indicator - The essential sensor for monitoring pre and post treated waste water. Reliable, regular measurements not only ensure compliance with environmental legislation but can also help to save energy by controlling processes.

 

What is BOD - Biochemical oxygen demand, BOD, measures the amount of oxygen consumed by microorganisms when decomposing organic matter. BOD also measures the chemical oxidation of inorganic matter (i.e., the extraction of oxygen from water via chemical reaction).

Breaking News:

Academic Collaboration with the University of West of England
Dr Darren Reynolds, Associate Professor in Bio-Sensing Research at the University of the West of England is a recognised authority in the use of fluorescence measurements for water quality monitoring, having published widely in this area for over a decade.  "For the past two years we have been collaborating very successfully with Dr Reynold’s group to both evaluate and optimise our UviLux fluorometers for BOD monitoring and other applications in the water industry," reports Chelsea's Technical Director, Dr John Attridge.

 

 

Download presentations & video shown at the New Sensors for Effluent Monitoring Workshop

Chelsea held a New Sensors for Effluent Monitoring Workshop on 19th July 2012. During the day Dr Darren Reynolds, Associate Professor in Bio-Sensing Research at the University of the West of England presented an overview of fluorescence measurements and their applications to water quality. Chelsea's Dr John Attridge, Technical Director presented information, field data and demonstrated the new UviLux BOD Indicator.

 Check out a video taken by Dr John Attridge (Technical Director, CTG) during field trials of the UviLux BOD Indicator in Gower, South Wales April 2012. Dr Attridge tested the water quality from an outflow of a small water plant at various points along the river.