DISCUSSION

The Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) test is used widely to estimate the amount organic
matter in wastewater. It is a measurement of the oxygen similar of the materials present in the
wastewater that are subject to oxidation by a strong chemical oxidant. When wastewater contains
only readily available organic bacterial food and no toxic matter, the COD test results provide a
good estimate of BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) value. The COD test only takes 2 hours
to obtain the results. After the sample (2 ml) and reagents put inside the vial, the solution was
preheated in the COD preheated in the COD reactor for two hours to increase the rate of the
reaction.

The COD reading (mg/L) obtained for pond are (P1=130), (P2=135), (P3=87) and
(P4=67) while for stream are (R1= -8mg/L), (R2= -10mg/L), (R3= 31mg/L) and (R4= -12mg/L).
The results for the stream are under range. This is may be due to the COD digestion reagent vials
type use was high range. Hence, COD value lower than 20 mg/L cannot be detected.

Parameter Classes
I II III IV V
COD Value <10 10–25 25-50 50-100 >100
Table 2: Classes in Malaysian Water Quality Index for Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD)

There are some precautions should be alert in this experiment. Firstly, samples must be
mixed well and measured quickly to avoid settling errors. The wastewater samples need to be
shaken before pipette it for the dilution. The spectrophotometer must be warmed up and zero
using the reagent blank. If the volume of deionized water added to the reagent blank is not 2.0
mL, the color of the reagent blank will be either lighter or darker than expected.