Technical Bulletin No. 0461: A Review of the Separation of Carbonaceous and Nitrogenous BOD in Long-term BOD Measurements

This technical bulletin discusses the estimation of ultimate BOD for use in mathematical water quality modeling studies and emphasizes techniques for the separation of carbonaceous (CBOD) and nitrogenous (NBOD) BOD in laboratory tests. This topic is of key concern in a number of industry waste load allocation studies, where the impact of CBOD on dissolved oxygen resources has been incorrectly modeled and in many cases overestimated. In part this controversy exists because there is no standard or uniform method for modeling CBOD and NBOD.