Without rapid and reliable identification of changes in organic content and composition, industries and municipalities alike face potentially harmful outcomes in terms of water quality, operational health and increased costs as well as public impact.
Some applicable examples for municipalities and/or industries include:
Overdosing of treatment chemicals to be on the safe side when no reliable and relevant data is available, e.g., excessive coagulant dosing
Treatment efficiency being compromised when sudden high loads of organics (slugs) are received at the treatment plant, e.g., biological treatment being overwhelmed
Product loss through spills and leaks that can take hours to detect and remedy without proper monitoring
Traditional lab-based BOD, COD and TOC methods are now being replaced by faster UV-Vis spectrophotometry-based analysis, such as ABB’s UviTec™ family that delivers accurate results in as little time as 5 seconds, compared to 5 days for a standard lab-based test like BOD.