Oxygen consumption during mineralization of organic compounds in water samples from a small sub-tropical reservoir (Brazil)

Assays were carried out to evaluate the oxygen consumption resulting from mineralization of different organic compounds: glucose, sucrose, starch, tannic acid, lysine and glycine. The compounds were added to 1 l of water sample from Monjolinho Reservoir. Dissolved oxygen and dissolved organic carbon were monitored during 20 days and the results were fitted to first order kinetics model. During the 20 days of experiments, the oxygen consumption varied from 4.5 mg.l-1 (tannic acid) to 71.5 mg.l-1 (glucose). The highest deoxygenation rate (kD) was observed for mineralization of tannic acid (0.321 day-1) followed by glycine, starch, lysine, sucrose and glucose (0.1004, 0.0504, 0.0486, 0.0251 and 0.0158 day-1, respectively). From theoretical calculations and oxygen and carbon concentrations we obtained the stoichiometry of the mineralization processes. Stoichiometric values varied from 0.17 (tannic acid) to 2.55 (sucrose)