1.

Suppose the only source of BOD in a river is untreated wastes that are being discharged from a
food processing plant. The resulting DO sag curve has a minimum value of DO, somewhere
downstream, equal to 3.0 mg/L (see the figure below). Just below the discharge point, the DO of
the stream is equal to the saturation value of 10.0 mg/L.

(a) If the stream flows 100 km per day, has a reaeration and degradation rate constant of 0.8 and
0.2 day-1 respectively (shown in the Figure), how far downstream would the lowest DO occur?
(b) By what percent should the BOD of the wastes be reduced to assure a healthy stream with at
least 5.0 mg/L of DO everywhere?

2. Streeter-Phelps model is a classic model to describe the dissolved oxygen (DO) in a river, which
can be used to calculate DO sag at steady-state:
𝑘𝐵𝑂𝐷
[𝑂2 ]𝑠𝑎𝑡 − [𝑂2 ]𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝐵𝑂𝐷0 ∙ 𝑒 −𝑘𝐵𝑂𝐷𝜏𝑐 (1)
𝑘𝑂2

𝑘𝐵𝑂𝐷 and 𝑘𝑂2 are biodegradation and reaeration rate constants. When deriving this equation in class,
we ignore effects from sedimentation of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). If we assume this
sedimentation processes can change BOD following mechanism:
dBODτ
𝑑𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑡𝑜𝑛 = −𝑘𝐷 ∙ BODτ , where kD is the rate constant for BOD
dτ
sedimentation.
(a) Rewrite the equation (1) by adding the BOD sedimentation term.
(b) Suppose the only source of BOD in a river is untreated wastes. Just below the discharge point,
the DO of the stream is equal to the saturation value of 8.5 mg/L. The river flows 100 km/day, has
a reaeration, biodegradation, and BOD sedimentation rate constant of 3.0, 0.4, and 0.1 day-1,
respectively. The DO has a minimum value somewhere downstream, how far downstream would
this lowest DO occur?