What is Permanganate Value (PV)?

Determination of the permanganate value (PV) for sewage and effluent can help indicate the oxygen requirement of waste streams during treatment and prior to discharge.

It represents the concentration of material in the waste stream that is oxidisable by potassium permanganate under acidic conditions. It is often represented as the quantity of oxygen consumed per litre of water (mg/L O2 or ppm O2).

As with COD, the use of an oxidising agent and acidic conditions is designed to accelerate the chemical and microbial oxidation of organic material that occurs in natural waters.

It cannot be used as a definitive measure of theoretical oxygen demand or the total organic content as many compounds are only partially oxidised during the test and therefore the full COD test is preferable where possible.

Permanganate values can be used directly to quantify water quality or can be converted to provide an estimate of the COD, BOD or TOC values.

The permanganate value test can be carried out with our sewage effluent kit.

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