Modeling Water Quality in Rivers

This study reports a PC software, used in a Windows-based environment, which was developed based on the first order reaction of Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and a modified Streeter and Phelps equation, in order to simulate and determine the variations of Dissolved Oxygen (DO) and of the BOD along with the studied river reaches. The software considers many impacts of environmental factors, such as the different type of discharges (concentrated or punctual source, tributary contribution, distributed source), nitrogenous BOD, BOD sedimentation, photosynthetic production and benthic demand of oxygen, and so on. The software has been used to model the DO profile along one river, with the aim to improve the water quality through suitable engineering measure.