A Modelling Approach to Manage Water Quality at Gharbia Main Drain, Egypt,
Mostafa, Mohamed, Elansary Amgad, and Moussa Moustafa
, International Water Technology Journal, IWTJ, Volume 7, Issue 2, p.104-115, (2017)
AbstractThe fundamental problem addressed during this study lies in the poor quality of surface water in Gharbia Main drain (Kitchener drain). This drain receives agricultural, domestic, industrial, as well as solid wastes from villages and cities located around its path. The main objective of this research is to manage water quality at the drain. The service area of the drain was divided into 6 main basins in order to facilitate the identification of the critical basins along the drain. Water samples were collected from the drain at each basin, and analyzed for different parameters by three different certified laboratories. The parameters included chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP). The concentrations of the selected parameters were also obtained from the literature data. Data analysis was conducted using the box plot tool in order to identify the most reliable data to be used as a benchmark for comparison with the modeling data. A tailored water quality modeling was created using MATLAB to simulate pollutant transport in Gharbia Main drains. Exponential and mass balance equations were used to estimate the targeted water quality parameters along the drain path. Model validation was performed between model estimation and actual data. From an economic point of view, it is recommended to apply the depollution projects in the most critical basins. Thus, a comparison was conducted between the current situation and three proposed scenarios of improving water quality at most critical basins through reducing the load of the domestic wastewater. The model results showed that basins No. 1 …