Respirometric methods provide direct measurements of the oxygen consumed by microorganisms from an air or the oxygen-enriched environment in a closed vessel under conditions of constant temperature and agitation. Carbon dioxide produced metabolically by the bacteria is chemically bound by the potassium hydroxide solution contained in the sealed cup in the bottle.The result is a pressure drop in the system, which is directly proportional to the BOD value and is measured by the Lovibond® BOD sensor. The BOD level is then displayed directly in mg/l.
The BOD values are stored automatically in the sensor memory in regular intervals and can be called up on the large-format display at any time without the need for time-consuming conversion using factors. This means that test series that end on a Sunday can be evaluated during the following week without any problem. Measurement series can be stored on USB stick/SD card or transfered via the USB cable to evalu-ate the data on a computer.The measurement period is user-selectable between 1 and 28 days to suit the application. While short measurement periods are useful for scientific applications, standard BOD measurements typically extend over a period of 5 days – and manometric determination of OECD, for example, generally takes place over a period of 28 days.
