Control of Pollution in River Streams

Abstract

In industrial societies, rivers are used as dumps for sewage except that the sewage is treated at sewage stations prior to discharge into the stream.  Untreated sewages discharged into the river contain high concentrations Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) that has adverse effect on both human and aquatic organisms. The need of real-time monitoring and effective treatment of wastewater is urgent, and Dissolved Oxygen (DO) content in water quality monitoring is an important indicator. In this paper a methodology is presented to determine allowable concentrations of BOD in a wastewater discharge. A discrete dynamic model of first order difference equation is described for the dynamics of BOD and DO in a two reach river system. Kalman filtering technique is applied to the first order discrete dynamic model to estimate the concentrations of BOD in the effluent being discharged into the stream. This methodology was applied to Warri River in Delta state of Nigeria. It was observed that the maximum allowable concentration of BOD in the effluent discharged to the stream is 0.01 mg/l.