In recent years, exergy analysis has been successfully applied to natural resources assessment. The consumption of any natural resource is unavoidably joined to dispersion and degradation. Therefore, exergy analysis can be applied to study the depletion of natural resources and, particularly, to water resources. Different studies range from global fresh water resources evaluation to specific water bodies' detailed analysis. Physical Hydronomics is a new approach based on the specific application of Thermodynamics to physically characterize the state of a river and to help in the Governance of water bodies. The core task in the methodology is the construction of the exergy profiles of the river and it requires the calculation of the different specific exergy components in the water body: potential, thermal, mechanical, kinetic and chemical exergy. This paper is focused on the exergy assessment for the organic chemical matter present in water bodies. Different parameters such as chemical oxygen demand (COD). biological oxygen demand (BOD) or total organic carbon (TOC), among others, can be used as raw data for the calculation. Starting from available sampling data, previous approaches are analyzed, completed and compared. The well-known and most simple average molecule representing the organic matter in the river (CH2O) is proposed. Results show that, considering surface waters, TOC parameter is the most convenient one, but also that the BOD and COD can be reasonably useful. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.