Abstract

Organic matter in drinking water is determined by applying indirect determination methods used for quantitative measurements such as total organic carbon (TOC), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). As a relatively less sophisticated and faster method ultraviolet absorption of water at 254 nm wavelength (UV254) is being now utilized in many countries to determine the organic matter in water. Because the UV254 absorbance parameter is proportional to the concentration of organics in the water in many research it is found that most natural water sources have a good correlation between, for example, TOC and UV254 absorption, and COD and UV254 absorption. Similarly, a definite correlation between the COD and BOD under certain conditions was reported in the literature. This study is aimed to establish the correlations among the parameters namely UV254, COD, BOD5, TOC, DOC (Dissolve organic carbon) for the river Sitalakhya, a specific surface water, which is the raw water source of the largest surface water treatment plant in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is revealed that there is a very strong correlation between TOC and UV254 with R2=0.86. Similarly, between BOD5 and UV254, and between COD and UV254, a strong correlation was found with coefficient of determination, R2 value respectively 0.93 and 0.87. All other coefficients also indicate highly significant linear correlations.

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