DISCUSSION
Of: Use of Biodegradable Dissolved Organic Carbon to
Assess Treatment Process Performance in Relation to
Solids Retention Time, R. W. Babcock, Jr.; S. King; E.
Khan; M. K. Stenstrom, 3, 517 (2001).
John F. Davis
This paper presents data and empirical relationships from
bench- and full-scale wastewater treatment systems to evaluate the
residual organic content of treated wastewater as a function of
solids retention time (SRT). Using linear regression, the authors
developed an empirical relationship, which relates the effluent
biodegradable dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) to the SRT and
various measures of dissolved organic carbon of the effluent
(DOCi, the initial DOC, and DOC5, the DOC remaining in the
BDOC test after 5 days). I appreciate the author’s work on the
topic of defining better measures of organic content in treated
effluents, particularly because the reuse of treated wastewater may
become more prevalent in the future. I have posed several ques-
tions and comments for the authors’ response.
(1) Why were measurements of influent BDOC not conducted or
reported? To evaluate the performance of treatment systems,
influent concentrations and important operational parameters,
such as SRT, must be known. The importance of SRT on the
performance of activated-sludge systems has been well-docu-
mented (Grady et al., 1999), and the results from the bench-
scale studies in this paper agree with these findings. Figure 6
of the original paper also shows that the BDOC data for the
full-scale plants from the California study are strongly related
to SRT. Although the California results are more variable, it is
possible that the differences in influent concentrations among
these plants could explain much of the variability in these data.
If influent values of BDOC were known, the fundamental
mass-balance formula could have been applied to develop
316
statistically significant relationships for effluent BDOC and
kinetic parameters in terms of BDOC, similar to the author’s
work using soluble chemical oxygen demand (SCOD) as
shown in Figure 2 of the original paper. This approach may
yield more meaningful results than developing strictly empir-
ical relationships (such as eq 3 in the original paper) that may
not relate to the fundamental problem.
(2) Should the data from the treatment plants in Hawaii be re-
ported if the authors had significant doubts regarding the
validity of the SRT values? It would seem that additional data
could have been collected before publishing to validate the
SRT values for the Hawaii plants, and this may have strength-
ened their results.
(3) Overall, I agree with the authors that BDOC measurements
provide more information on the quality of highly treated
effluent than standard biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5)
tests, and the BDOC test may have value for examining the
potential for biofilm growth in systems that reuse treated
wastewater. However, the fate and health risks posed by all
residuals in treated wastewater are likely to be of concern
where reuse is being practiced, so that measures of total
organic carbon and DOC measurements may be of equal or
more concern than BDOC.
Acknowledgments
John F. Davis is an associate professor in the Department of
Civil Engineering at Widener University, Chester, Pennsylvania.
Correspondence should be addressed to John F. Davis, Department
of Civil Engineering, Widener University, One University Place,
Chester, PA 19013.
References
Grady, C. P. L., Jr.; Daigger, G. T.; Lim, H. C. (1999) Biological Waste-
water Teatment; Marcel Dekker: New York.
Water Environment Research, Volume 74, Number 3