Voltammetric method for chemical oxygen demand in a dairy wastewater using homemade minimal instrumentation

This paper presents a voltammetric method for Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) quantification in a dairy wastewater using homemade minimal electrochemical instrumentation. The working electrode was a carbon microdisc, the auxiliary electrode was a carbon rod, and a silver electrode was used as reference. A low-cost non-commercial potentiostat was employed. The linear working range was 1-20 g/L. Repeatability was evaluated on 10 sample quantifications, the coefficient of variation was 3.6%, lower than that obtained for the reference spectrophotometric method (8.2%). The voltammetric method did not require treatment of the sample. The trueness was evaluated by comparing the voltammetric results with the spectrophotometric method. Mean COD of 10 quantifications using low-cost voltammetry was 10.2 g/L, whereas for the spectrophotometric method it was 11.0 g/L. A Paired Sample t-Test did not show statistically significant differences between both. Detection limit was 0.6 g/L, and quantification limit was 1.8 g/L. Both are acceptable for the sample in which there is a high organic content.