Photoelectrochemical determination of chemical oxygen demand

Abstract

A method for determining chemical oxygen demand of a water sample comprises the steps of (a) applying a constant potential bias to a photoelectrochemical cell, having a photoactive working electrode (e.g. a layer of titanium dioxide nanoparticles coated on an inert conductive substrate) and a counter electrode, and containing a supporting electrolyte solution; (b) illuminating the working electrode with a light source and recording the background photocurrent produced at the working electrode from the supporting electrolyte solution; (c) adding a water sample, to be analyzed, to the photoelectrochemical cell; (d) illuminating the working electrode with a light source and recording the total photoelectrocurrent produced with the sample; (e) determining the chemical oxygen demand according to the type (exhaustive or non-exhaustive) of degradation conditions employed.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates to a new method for determining oxygen demand of water using photoelectrochemical cells. In particular, the invention relates to a new photoelectrochemical method of determining chemical oxygen demand of water samples using a titanium dioxide nanoparticulate semiconductive electrode. BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION [0002] Nearly all domestic and industrial wastewater effluents contain organic compounds, which can cause detrimental oxygen depletion (or demand) in waterways into which the effluents are released. This demand is due largely to the oxidative biodegradation of organic compounds by naturally occurring microorganisms, which utilize the organic material as a food source. In this process, carbon is oxidised to carbon dioxide, while oxygen is consumed and reduced to water. [0003] Standard analytical methodologies for the determination of aggregate properties such as oxygen demand in water are biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0024] This invention is partly predicated on the insight that the methods described in the prior art, utilising photoelectrochemical properties of TiO2 nanoparticle semiconductive electrodes provide for the direct determination of COD. In the prior art method, the method relies for accuracy on the two oxygen electrodes, which have to be identical in responding to the oxygen change. In addition, the prior art method cannot be used for low COD samples due to the insufficient sensitivity of the method. Low COD content is important in testing water for suitability in drinking and cleaning applications. By using this technique the measurement of milliamperes of current allows much greater sensitivity in the low COD range.

[0046] A supporting electrolyte is used to determine the background photocurrent and to dilute the water sample to be tested. The determination of the background photocurrent measures the oxidation of water and this can be deducted from the sample reading to give the photocurrent due to the oxidation of organic material in the sample. This measurement may be made as a separate measurement to the sample reading or when conducting an exhaustive degradation the final steady current after the oxidation is completed is a measure of the background photo current. The supporting electrolyte may be selected from sodium nitrate, sodium perchlorate or any other electrolytes that are electrochemically and photoelectrochemically stable under the experimental conditions and do not absorb UV radiation in the range being used. The dilution of the samples enables the method to have a wide linear range while still keeping the test duration to a relatively small period.

Problems solved by technology

Nearly all domestic and industrial wastewater effluents contain organic compounds, which can cause detrimental oxygen depletion (or demand) in waterways into which the effluents are released.

Despite their widespread use for estimating oxygen demand, both BOD and COD methodologies have serious technological limitations.

Both methods are time consuming and very expensive, costing water industries and local authorities in excess of $1 billion annually worldwide.

Other problems with the BOD assay include: limited linear working range; complicated, time consuming procedures; and questionable accuracy and reproducibility (the standard method accepts a relative standard deviation of ±15% for replicate BOD5 analyses).

More importantly, interpretation of BOD results is difficult since the results tend to be specific to the body of water in question, depend on the pollutants in the sample solution and the nature of the microbial seed used.

In addition, the BOD methodologies cannot be used to assess the oxygen demand for many heavily polluted water bodies because of inhibitory and toxic effects of pollutants on the heterotropic bacteria.

Despite this, the method has several drawbacks in that it is time consuming, requiring 2-4 hours to reflux samples, and utilises expensive (e.g. Ag2SO4), corrosive (e.g. concentrated H2SO4) and highly toxic (Hg(III) and Cr(VI)) reagents.

The use of toxic reagents being of particular environmental concern, leading to the Cr(VI) method being abandoned in Japan.

The electrode system developed by Fox et al had low photocatalytic efficiency of the system and is difficult to use as it cannot discriminate between the respective currents generated from the oxidation of water and organic matter.

Similar to Fox et al this electrode system had low photocatalytic efficiency and cannot discriminate between the currents generated from the oxidation of water and organic matter.

However, as concentration of methanol increased the migration of photoelectrons across the TiO2 film and therefore photogenerated charge separation becomes a rate-limiting step, thus limiting the working range in which the linear relationship between photocurrent and concentration occurs.

In this study Kim et al reports that the membrane sensor did not show good reproducibility.

There are many disadvantages of their method, which makes the practical application of the method very difficult.

To date the COD assay methodologies of the prior art are indirect in their analysis methods requiring calibration and often suffer from having low sensitivity, poor accuracy, narrow linear working ranges and / or difficult to operate.

More importantly, these prior art COD assay methodologies are matrix dependent due to the low oxidation efficiency.

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