It is good practice to conduct quality control checks and quality assurance procedures as outlined in Chapter 6, QA/QC and Verification, of Volume 1. Below, some fundamental QA/QC procedures include:
• For industrial wastewater, inventory compilers may review the secondary data sets (e.g., from national statistics, regulatory agencies, wastewater treatment associations or industry associations) , that are used to estimate and rank industrial COD waste output. Some countries may have regulatory control over industrial discharges, in which cases significant QA/QC protocols may already be in place for the development of the wastewater characteristics on an industry basis.
• For industrial wastewater, inventory compilers should cross-check values for MCFs against those from other national inventories with similar wastewater characteristics.
• The inventory compilers should review facility-specific data on CH4 recovery to ensure that it was reported according to criteria on measurements outlined in Chapter 2, Approaches to Data Collection, in Volume 1.
• Use a carbon balance check to ensure that the carbon contained in CH4 recovery is less than the carbon contained in BOD entering the facility that reports CH4 recovery.
• If sludge removal is reported in the wastewater inventory, check for consistency with the estimates for sludge applied to agriculture soils, sludge incinerated, and sludge deposited in solid waste disposal.
• For countries that use country-specific parameters or higher tier methods, inventory compilers should crosscheck the national estimates with emissions using the IPCC default method and parameters.