Basic Environmental Engineering

( CEng3221)

Chapter 2 - Water and Water Quality

Parameters
 Outline
●
Water Resource 2) Chemical Parameters
– Inorganic mineral indicator
●
Water Cycle parameters
●
Water Resource Problems ●
Total Solids (TS)
●
Electric Conductivity (EC)
●
Water pollution ●
Hardness
●
Types of pollutants ●
pH
●
Alkalinity
●
Pollutant type, Sources & effect – Organic mineral indicator
●
Water Quality Parameters ●
Dissolved Oxygen (DO)
●
Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD)
1) Physical Parameters ●
Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD)
●
Color, taste and odor
3) Biological Parameters
●
Turbidity
●
Water Quality Standards
 Water
●
Water is a polar inorganic compound made up of
two hydrogen and one oxygen molecules that
occurs at room temperature as a clear colorless
odorless tasteless liquid; freezes into ice below 0
0C and boils above 100 0C at sea level.

●
1386 million km3 is the total volume of water that is
available on earth.
●
Water is the only compound that exist in three
phases at the temperatures found on earth: solid,
liquid and gaseous.

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 Hydrosphere
●
The hydrosphere (from the Greek hydro, water, and sphaira, sphere).
●
The hydrosphere represents the total amount of water that exist on earth.
●
1386 million km3 water includes water in liquid and frozen form
●
About 97% Earth’s water is salty

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 Freshwater Resource
●
Represents less than 0.5 % of the planet’s water is
available fresh liquid H2O.
●
Surface Water
– Streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, reservoirs, wetlands
– Runoff replenishes surface water
●
Groundwater
– Supply of fresh water found under Earth’s surface--recharged
when water at surface infiltrates into the ground
– Stored in under ground aquifers
– Discharged into rivers, springs, etc…

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 Water Cycle
●
All the water mass transform from one form to
another in the course of hydrological (water) cycle.
●
The sun is the driving force of the water cycle
●
Generally, the water cycle is composed of three steps
1) Evaporation:
– Evaporation: Water evaporates from the surface water
bodies like ocean, lakes and rivers
– Sublimation: ice and snow directly change into water
– Evapo-transpiration occur for plants and the soil.

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 Cont’d

2) Condensation
– as altitude increases, air pressure decreases and
the temperature drops. The lowered temperature
causes water vapor to condense
– A huge concentration of these droplets over a large
space up in the atmosphere become visible as
cloud.
– Fog is formed if the water vapor condenses near
ground level.

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 cont’d

3) Precipitation
– Air currents move water vapor around the globe,
cloud particles collide, grow, and fall out of the
upper atmospheric layers due to gravity.

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 Water Resource Problems
●
Too much water
●
Too little water (Water
Shortage)
●
Poor Quality Water ( Water
Pollution)

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 Water pollution
●
Water is considered polluted if some substance or
condition is present in such a degree that the water
cannot be used a specific purpose.
●
Sources of water pollution are categorized as:
1) Point source
– refers to contaminants that enter a waterway from a
single, identifiable source, such as an effluent pipe.
– e.g. domestic and industrial waste
– are easy to effectively check and control

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 Cont’d

2) Non-point sources
– are scattered or spread over large areas.
– This types of sources deliver pollutants indirectly
through environmental changes and account for
majority of the contaminants in streams and lakes.
– For example, the contaminated water that runs off
from agriculture farms, construction sites,
abandoned mines,
– It is quite difficult to control non-point sources.

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 Types of pollutants
●
refer to the substances which are capable of
making physical, chemical or biological change in
the water body.
– They can be categorized in six main groups:
1) Oxygen demanding pollutants
2) Solids
3) Nutrients
4) Heat
5) Radioactive
6) Pathogens

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 Pollutant type, Sources & effect
Pollutant Source Effect

Oxygen Dairy industries, breweries, ●

Deplete dissolved oxygen
demanding municipal wastewater

●
Blocking light penetration
Solids Run off, erosion … ●
Deplete oxygen
●
Damage gill structure

Agriculture run off, industrial ●

Eutrophication
Nutrients
wastes.. ( uncontrolled algal growth)
●
Decrease solubility of
Heat industrial and thermal plants
oxygen
Radioactive mining, nuclear plants, research ●
Cancer and genetic defect
material labs
Pathogens domestic sewage, hospital ●
Disease

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 Measurements of Water Quality
●
Quantitative measurements of pollutants are obviously
necessary before water pollution can be controlled.
Sampling
●
Is a procedure of collecting a representative portion.
●
It determines the quality and interpretation of the
analysis result.
●
There are two basic types of sampling methods
– Grab sampling
– Composite sampling

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 Cont’d
●
Grab sampling:
– sample is taken at only one sampling point and
time
– The result only represent the quality of the source
at that specific time and place.
●
Composite sampling:
– Is carried out by taking a series of grab samples
and mixing them together.

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 Water Quality Parameters
●
Water quality is used to describe the physical, chemical,
biological and aesthetic properties of water that
determine its fitness for a variety of uses and for the
protection of aquatic ecosystems.
●
The quality of natural water sources for different purposes is
established in terms of water quality parameters..
●
Water quality parameters gives insight into the physical,
chemical and biological characteristics of the water
– Physical parameters
– Chemical Parameters
– Biological Parameters

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 Physical Parameters
●
Can be determined by sense of touch, sigh, smell
and taste.
●
Include: temperature, color, taste, odor, turbidity …
Temperature
– Is the measure of hotness or coldness of a material
– Is measured by thermometer
– It affects different characteristics of water like density,
viscosity, reaction rates.

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 Color, taste and odor
●
Are mostly important from the standpoint of
aesthetics
– Clean water is considered as colorless, odorless
and tasteless.
– Color can be measured by Platinum-Cobalt (Pt-Co
Scale) Method or by using spectrometer.

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 Turbidity
●
is the measure of the relative clarity of water.
●
Is an optical characteristics of water.
●
Is an expression of the amount of light that is
scattered by the water when a light is shines through
it.
●
The higher the intensity of the scattered light, the
higher the turbidity.
●
Is expressed by using nephelometric turbidity unity
(NTU)

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 Chemical Parameters
●
is the reflection of the kind of pollutant to which
the water has been in contact with.
●
Can be divided into two groups:
– Inorganic mineral indicator parameters
– Organic mineral indicator parameter

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 Inorganic mineral indicators
●
Mostly are enters water via run off and erosion
– Inorganic minerals are categorized into:
●
Cations: are ions with positive charge.
●
Major cations include: Ca2+, Mg2+, K+, Na+, and K+
●
Anions: are ions with negative charge
● Major anions include: Cl-, SO42-, CO32-, HCO3-, F-,
NO3-

Indicators include Total Solid, pH, Hardness,

Conductivity,

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 Organic mineral indicator
●
Organic materials are mostly made of C, H, O
&N
●
Are generated from living organisms and
industries
●
Indicators include Biological Oxygen Demand
(BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD)

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 Total Solids (TS)

Is the total amount of solid, suspended or dissolved solids

that present in the water
●
It include any material left in a container after water is
removed with evaporation at 103 -105 oC.
●
The total solid is divided into:
– Total Suspended solid (TSS): solids that are retained on 2.0
µm filter.
– Total Dissolved solid (TDS): solids that can pass via 2.0
µm filter.
TS=TDS+TSS

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 Electric Conductivity (EC)
●
Measures the capacity of water to transmit
electricity.
●
Is expressed in micro Siemens per cm
●
EC of water increase with increase in TDS
●
Corrosiveness of water increase with increase
in TDS and EC.

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 Hardness

Is predominantly caused by divalent cations, Ca2+, Mg2+

●
Is expressed as mg/l CaCO3 and it is used to classify
waters from “soft” to “very hard”
●
Determine the industrial application of water
●
Hard water decrease efficiency of heater and pipes by
forming scale.
●
Is categorized into two groups:
1) Permanent Hardness
2) Temporary Hardness

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 Cont’d

Permanent Hardness:
– is created due to the presence of chlorides, nitrates
and sulfates of calcium and magnesium.
– It can not be precipitated by boiling.
Temporary Hardness:
– is created due to the presence of bicarbonate.
– It can be removed by boiling.

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 pH
●
is a quantitative measurement of acidity or basicity.
●
Is determined by measuring the hydrogen ion (H+) concentration.
●
Pure water dissociates slightly into equal concentrations of hydrogen
and hydroxyl (OH-) ions, which makes it a neutral solution with pH
value of 7.
H 2 +O 2 → H 2 O
●
pH is calculated with the following formula:

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 Alkalinity
●
measures the buffering capacity of the water against changes in pH.
●
Water that has a high alkalinity can accept large doses of acids or
bases without changing the pH significantly.
●
In natural waters much of the alkalinity is provided by the carbonate/
bicarbonate buffering system. Carbon dioxide (CO2) dissolves in water
to form carbonic acid (H2CO3), which dissociates and is in equilibrium
with bicarbonate (HCO3) and carbonate (CO32-) ions:
CO2 (gas) ↔ CO2 (dissolved)
CO2 (dissolved) + H2O ↔ H2CO3 ↔H+ + HCO3- ↔2H+ + CO32-
●
Alkalinity is calculated as:
Alkalinity = [HCO3-] + 2 * [CO32-] + [OH-]+[H+]

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 Organic Mineral Indicator Parameters
Dissolved Oxygen (DO)
– Is the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water.
– two sources of oxygen in water are diffusion from air and
photosynthesis. Without it aerobic organisms won’t be able to
live in water.
– Oxygen is poorly soluble in water
– Solubility of oxygen in water decreases with increase in
temperature.
– Can be measure by using oxygen probe or by membrane
electron method and Winkler’s Method (Iodometric titration).
– Is expressed in mg/l.

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 Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD)
●
is the amount of dissolved oxygen needed by aerobic
biological organisms to breakdown organic material organic
material.
●
Is used to estimate the pollution load of wastewater and
efficiency of treatment plant.
● BOD5 is the most widely used method of BOD measurement
● BOD5 is the difference in DO concentration after 5 days of
incubation at 200C; expressed in mg/l.
●
One problem with BOD test is that it takes long time (5
days) to get result.

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 Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD)
●
Unlike BOD, organic compounds are oxidized
chemically instead of biologically.
●
Because nearly all organic compounds are oxidized in
the COD test, while
●
only some are decomposed during the BOD test, COD
results are always higher than BOD results.
●
It can be defined as “the measure of oxygen equivalent
to the organic content of the sample that is susceptible
to oxidation by a strong chemical oxidant (potassium
permanganate)”.

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 Biological Parameters
●
Is used to describe the presence of pathogenic (disease
causing in their host) microorganisms.
●
There are a large number pathogens that can cause
diseases that can be transmitted by water
– E.g. Salmonella ------------------- typhoid
– Vibrio Choler ----------------------- Cholera
– Hapititus A -------------------------- Hepatitis
– Entamoeba histolytica ----------- Amoebic Dystentery
●
commonly indicator organisms are used to determine the
biological quality of a water sample.

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 Coliforms
●
The most widely used indicator organisms are
coliforms,
●
E Coli the most widely used indicator organism
●
E Coli is a common inhabitant of the intestinal
tract of humans and mammals.
●
It is rod shaped bacteria capable of fermenting
lactose with in 48 h at 35 0C

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 Cont’d
●
Coliforms are selected as indicator organisms for the following
reasons:
– Are usually inhabitants of the intestinal tract of humans and
mammals. Thus the presence of coliforms is an indication of fecal
contamination.
– The number of coliforms excreted in feces are large in number
compared to other disease causing pathogens, which make them
easy to detect and culture.
– Coliforms survive natural water for relatively long period without
effectively reproducing in this environment. Thus, presence of
coliforms indicate contamination rather than growth. Since coliforms
survive better than other pathogens, therefore their absence is a
reasonably safe indication of pathogens are absence.

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 Water Quality Standards
●
Are established by a legal authority to define the
level of pollutant allowed in a water system.
●
Aimed at achieving the desired quality of water
system and its fitness for a variety of uses and
for the protection of aquatic ecosystems.
●
There are two types of standards:
– Receiving water standards:
– Effluent standards

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 Cont’d
●
Receiving water standards:
●
Refer to the quality of receiving water bodies (rivers, lakes, sea..)
●
Consider the used of water system for different uses (drinking,
agriculture, industrial use ..)
●
Effluent standards
– Refers to quality of effluents discharged to receiving waters
bodies.
●
Set the required maximum pollutant concentration to be achieved or
degree of treatment required before discharge.
●
Must be reasonable so that discharge could be able to achieve the
standards through available technology

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Parameter Domestic Agricultural Discharge
pH 6.5-8.5 6.5 – 8.5 6-9
TDS 1200 mg/l 1200 2000 mg/l
E. Coli Nil Nil Nil
Arsenic 0.01 mg/l 0.1 mg/l 0.02 mg/l
BOD 500 mg/l
COD 1000 mg/l

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