B.O.D. of Synthetic Organic
Chemicals
CHARLES   B.   LAMB
Group Leader, Special Analysis Laboratory
GEORGE   F.   JENKINS
Supervisor of Design, Engineering Department
Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Co.
A Division of Union  Carbide & Carbon Corp.
South Charleston, W. Va.
The unpredictable behavior of pure synthetic organic chemical
compounds in the five-day biochemical oxygen demand test is not a
recent finding. Data on this subject have been presented by Carbide
& Carbon Chemicals Company as early as 1949 (1), pointing out many
inconsistencies for which there has been found no explanation as yet.
Similar results have been reported by Southwest Engineering (2) and
Prof. C. N. Sawyer (3).
Interest in such determinations is not prompted by the possibility
that appreciable quantities of these pure compounds may be found in
waste streams being discharged from the company's chemical plants.
The data, however, have provided clues to explain the great discrepancies which exist between the B.O.D. values of wastes at the source,
with those found in river streams. As has been reported previously (4),
for many years attempts were made to evaluate the total pollution
load on the Kanawha River caused by the more than 40 waste streams
discharged from the South Charleston plant of Carbide & Carbon
Chemicals Co. Thousands of samples were taken and analyzed, but
the computed totals were always less than the values reported by the
West Virginia Water Commission as result of surveys made by that
group, on the river itself.
It was important both to the company and to the Commission to
develop acceptable results through appraisal of the B.O.D. value of
the total waste effluent, because this should have been much easier to
perform and more accurate than stream surveys. Cooperation with
the State Water Commission soon proved that the differences were not
due to lack of suitable equipment or improper techniques. Search of
the literature on the subject in an attempt to ascertain whether any
of the numerous modifications of the test would prove more satisfactory,
revealed that very little work  had been published prior to 1946, on
326