Tag Archives: biosensor

382-395 K. Pitman, M. Raud and T. Kikas
Biochemical oxygen demand sensor arrays
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Biochemical oxygen demand sensor arrays

K. Pitman, M. Raud and T. Kikas*

Estonian University of Life Sciences, Institute of Technology, Kreutzwaldi 56, EE51014 Tartu, Estonia. *Correspondence: timo.kikas@emu.ee

Abstract:

Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) is one of the most widely utilized parameters in water quality evaluation. BOD as a parameter illustrates the amount of organic compounds susceptible to biochemical degradation in the water. The BOD test lasts for at least 5–7 days or even up to 21 days. An incubation time this long is not acceptable for monitoring purposes or system control. In order to shorten the BOD measurement time, a multitude of biosensors have been proposed. Unfortunately, BOD biosensors have several limitations, such as short lifetime, limited substrate range, precision etc. Some of those limitations can be overcome by using microbial sensor-arrays. Such bioelectronic tongues can achieve the much wider substrate range usually attributed to multiculture sensors and still maintain the long lifetime of a single culture sensor. This is achieved by separating different cultures from each other in the array and using the signals of separate sensors to produce summarised information via statistical analysis. The purpose of this review is to give a short overview of BOD measurements and discuss the potential of using sensor-arrays for BOD measurements.

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