Laboratory Report: Universiti Teknologi Mara

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA
LABORATORY REPORT
EVT 525
WATER RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY
EXPERIMENT 5a: CHEMICAL OXYGEN DEMAND (COD)
NAME:
NO. MATRIX:
GROUP:
LECTURER’S NAME:
FACULTY OF APLLIED SCIENCE

UiTM SHAH ALAM, SELANGOR
TITTLE
Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) by Reactor Digestion Method
OBJECTIVE
To determine and measure of oxygen requirement of the sample waste water through chemical
oxygen demand (COD) process.
METHOD
Firstly, the accuracy of the 20 – 1500 mg/L range was checked by used 300 mg/L of standard
solution. The 2 mL of one of these solutions was used as the sample volume. The result must
be 100 mg/L COD respectively, if not the calibration on the instrument used was adjusted.
The sample contains suspended solid was homogenize 100mL of sample for 30 seconds in a
blender. The homogenized sample was pour into a 250 mL beaker and gently stir on a
magnetic plate for the 200 – 1500 mg/L range to improve the accuracy and reproducibility of
other ranges. The COD reactor was turned on and preheater to 150 °C. The safety shield was
place in front of the reactor. The caps of a COD digestion reagent vial was remove for the
appropriate range. The vial was hold at 45° angle, 2.0 mL of the sample was pipetted into the
vial. The vial was cap tightly and the exterior of the COD vial was rinse and wipe clean with
paper towel. The vial was gently invert several times to mix the content and the vial was
placed in the preheated COD reactor. The blank was prepared by repeating the steps by
substituted the blank of 2.0 mL distilled water for the sample. The vial was heated for 2 hours.
The reactor was turned off and waited about 20 minutes to cool the vial to 120 °C. Each of
the vial was invert several times while still warm. The vial was placed into rack and cooled
to the room temperature. The procedure was proceed to the colorimetric determination to
measure the COD.
RESULTS
COD VALUE (ppm)
VIALS
1 2 3 4 AVERAGE
BLANK 0 0 0 0 0
STANDARD 101 141 78 96 104
S1 137 142 132 149 140
S2 72 77 55 60 66
S3 36 43 33 40 38
S4 28 28 53 26 33.75
DISCUSSION
There are some precautions should be alert in this experiment. Firstly, samples must be mixed
well and measured quickly to avoid settling errors. The wastewater samples need to be shaken
before pipette it for the dilution. The spectrophotometer must be warmed up and zero using
the reagent blank. If the volume of deionized water added to the reagent blank is not 2.0 mL,
the color of the reagent blank will be either lighter or darker than expected. Besides using this
common method, we can apply other method in determination of chemical oxygen demand
such as photoelectrocatalysis of nanoporousTiO2 electrodes for more accurate and short time
test (Zhaoyang et.al, 2016).
QUESTIONS
1. Why is it important to perform COD test in wastewater treatment?
To determine the amount of organic pollutants found in surface water or wastewater.
This makes COD a useful measure of water quality.
2. What is the function of the blank vial in the determination?
To compensate for any error that may result because of the presence of extraneous
organic matter in the reagents.
3. What will happen to the COD value if HgSO4 and Ag2SO4 are not added?
Chlorine will not be separated out of the sample effluent, making COD value higher
than it should be.
4. What is the reason that some time a green solution is formed after digestion? How do you
overcome this problem?
The organic matter present in sample gets oxidized completely by potassium

dichromate (K2Cr2O4) in the presence of sulphuric acid (H2SO4), silver sulphate
(AgSO4) and mercury sulphate (HgSO4) to produce CO2 and H2O. Dichromate ions
form orange-coloured solutions. When dichromate is reduced to chromic ion, the
solution becomes green.
To overcome this problem, it must be treated as hazardous wastes and mercury.
CONCLUSION
Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) of the sample was determined by using Reactor Digestion
Method. The COD ranges (mg/L) obtained for blank, standard , sample 1,2,3 and 4 are 0, 104,
140,66,38 and 33.75 mg/L respectively.
REFERENCES
Zhaoyang, Z., Xin, C., & Aicheng, C. (2016). Determination of chemical oxygen demand based
on photoelectrocatalysis of nanoporous TiO2 electrodes. Elsevier, 664–670.

Laboratory Report: Universiti Teknologi Mara

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UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

EXPERIMENT 5a: CHEMICAL OXYGEN DEMAND (COD)

FACULTY OF APLLIED SCIENCE

STANDARD 101 141 78 96 104

S1 137 142 132 149 140

To determine the amount of organic pollutants found in surface water or wastewater.

This makes COD a useful measure of water quality.

2. What is the function of the blank vial in the determination?

The organic matter present in sample gets oxidized completely by potassium

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