Nile River is the valued natural and exclusive source of fresh water in Egypt, where the drinking water supply is limited to the river. The water quality of 24 sites between Aswan and Cairo along the Nile was investigated. To evaluate the suitability of water for aquatic life and drinking purposes, the indices of water quality (WQI), heavy metal pollution (HPI) and contamination (Cd) were computed. The water quality variations were mainly related to inorganic nutrients and heavy metals, where, the sites affected by intensive load of urban, agricultural and industrial wastewater showed serious deterioration of water quality compared with other sites. The anthropogenic impact sites showed high HPI and Cd values and associated with high risks, where, most of the studied metals often exceeded the drinking water and aquatic life limits. The aquatic WQI indicated that the Nile water quality deteriorated and extended from poor to marginal, while drinking WQI varied from marginal to good. Accordingly, the river becoming unfit for aquatic life and the situation is getting worse by decreases in the water budget from the Nile in Egypt by building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, where the dilution strength of the Nile system will reduce
1 January 2014 in Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Research
Ismailia Canal is one of the most important branches of the Nile River in Egypt. It is the main source of drinking and irrigation water for many cities. Weighted arithmetic method of water quality index (WQI) was used to evaluate the water quality of Ismailia Canal according to drinking, irrigation and aquatic life water utilizations. The objective of the index is to transform complex water quality data into understandable and usable information by the public. The WQI values of Ismailia Canal are good to poor for drinking and aquatic life utilizations, and excellent for irrigation utilization. Metal index (MI) and pollution index (PI) were calculated to assess the contaminations of the canal water with the metals (Al+3, Cd+2. Cu+2, Fe+2, Mn+2, Ni+2, Pb+2 and Zn+2). MI and PI values denote the dangerous pollution of the canal water, which is described as seriously at most sites along, in particular for drinking and fisheries utilizations. It may be attributed to the effluents of different industrial wastes arriving at the canal water. Law 48/1982 for the protection of the Nile River and its waterways against pollution must be enforced to prevent the obvious deterioration of the canal water and to improve its quality
1 January 2014 in Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Research
Eight heavy metals were measured seasonally in the sediment of Lake Nasser during 2013. 27 sites were chosen through 9 sectors across the main channel of the lake from Abu-Simbel to Aswan High Dam to assess the levels of the selected metals. The abundance of these metals was in the order of Fe>Mn>Zn>Cr>Ni>Cu>Pb>Cd, with mean concentrations of 12.41mg/g, 279.56, 35.38, 30.79, 27.56, 21.78, 11.21 and 0.183μg/g, respectively. Heavy metals are positively correlated with fine particles (mud fractions) and organic matter accumulation. The results showed perspicuous spatial high significant differences (P<0.01) for all the measured metals. Fe, Cr, Ni, Pb and Cd exhibited temporally high significant differences (P<0.01) before and after the flood period. Four Pollution Indices were used for the environmental assessment of Lake Nasser sediment. The indices included three single indices, Enrichment Factor (EF), Index of Geo-accumulation (Igeo) and Contamination Factor (CF). While the fourth, Pollution Load Index (PLI) was an integrated index. The pollution indexes confirmed that the Lake Nasser sediment was not contaminated with these elements. Sediments of Lake Nasser may be represented as a reference for the pre-industrial background of River Nile Sediments downstream Aswan High Dam
1 January 2015 in Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Research
The removal of aluminum, iron and manganese from some pollution sources that drain into Ismailia Canal has been investigated using two different sorbents; granular activated carbon (GAC) and Amberlite IR-120H (AIR-120H). Batch equilibrium experiments showed that the two sorbents have maximum removal efficiency for aluminum and iron pH 5 and 10min contact time in ambient room temperature, while pH 7 and 30min were the most appropriate for manganese removal. Dosage of 2g/l for both GAC and AIR-120H was established to give the maximum removal capacity. At optimum conditions, the removal trend was in order of Al+3>Fe+2>Mn+2 with 99.2, 99.02 and 79.05 and 99.55, 99.42 and 96.65% of metal removal with GAC and AIR-120H, respectively. For the three metals, Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms showed higher R2 values, with a slightly better fitting for the Langmuir model. In addition, separation factors (RL) and exponent (n) values indicated favorable Langmuir (0
1 December 2019 in Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Research