Department Surface Waters - Research and Management

We currently develop a method for the characterization of the ‘degradability’ of OM, which is based on the biological O₂ demand. The O₂ consumption rate of a sediment quantity is determined in a batch reactor during 16 hours from the linear range of the slope of continuous optic measurements of the decreasing O₂ concentration. Presently, results allow the comparison of degradability of various sediment samples using the ‘respiration rate’ [mg O₂ mg TOC^-1 day-1] as a relative measure.