Safeguarding drinking water is a major public health and environmental concern because it is essential to human life but may contain pollutants that can cause illness or harm the environment. Therefore, continuous research is necessary to improve water treatment methods and guarantee its quality. As part of this study, the effectiveness of coagulation–flocculation treatment using aluminum sulfate (Al₂(SO₄)₃) was evaluated on a very polluted site. Samplings were taken almost every day for a month from the polluted site, and the samples were characterized by several physicochemical properties, such as hydrogen potential (pH), electrical conductivity, turbidity, organic matter, ammonium (NH⁺₄), phosphate (PO₄³⁻), nitrate (NO₃⁻), nitrite (NO₂⁻), calcium (Ca²⁺), magnesium (Mg²⁺⁾, total hardness (TH), chloride (Cl⁻⁾, bicarbonate (HCO₃⁻), sulfate (SO₄²⁻), iron (Fe³⁺), manganese (Mn²⁺), aluminum (Al³⁺), potassium (K⁺), sodium (Na⁺), complete alkalimetric titration (TAC), and dry residue (DR). Then, these samples were treated with Al₂(SO₄)₃ using the jar test method, which is a common method to determine the optimal amount of coagulant to add to the water based on its physicochemical characteristics. A mathematical model had been previously created using the support vector machine method to predict the dose of coagulant according to the parameters of temperature, pH, TAC, conductivity, and turbidity. This Al₂(SO₄)₃ treatment step was repeated at the end of each month for a year, and a second characterization of the physicochemical parameters was carried out in order to compare them with those of the raw water. The results showed a very effective elimination of the various pollutions, with a very high rate, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the Al₂(SO₄)₃. The physicochemical parameters measured after the treatment showed a significant reduction in the majority of the physicochemical parameters. These results demonstrated that the coagulation–flocculation treatment with Al₂(SO₄)₃ was very effective in eliminating the various pollutions present in the raw water. They also stress the importance of continued research in the field of water treatment to improve the quality of drinking water and protect public health and the environment.

Monitoring stations have been established to combat water pollution, improve the ecosystem, promote human health, and facilitate drinking water production. However, continuous and extensive monitoring of water is costly and time-consuming, resulting in limited datasets and hindering water management research. This study focuses on developing an optimized K-nearest neighbor (KNN) model using the improved grey wolf optimization (I-GWO) algorithm to predict dry residue quantities. The model incorporates 20 physical and chemical parameters derived from a dataset of 400 samples. Cross-validation is employed to assess model performance, optimize parameters, and mitigate the risk of overfitting. Four folds are created, and each fold is optimized using 11 distance metrics and their corresponding weighting functions to determine the best model configuration. Among the evaluated models, the Jaccard distance metric with inverse squared weighting function consistently demonstrates the best performance in terms of statistical errors and coefficients for each fold. By averaging predictions from the models in the four folds, an estimation of the overall model performance is obtained. The resulting model exhibits high efficiency, with remarkably low errors reflected in the values of R, R², R²_ADJ, RMSE, and EPM, which are reported as 0.9979, 0.9958, 0.9956, 41.2639, and 3.1061, respectively. This study reveals a compelling non-linear correlation between physico-chemical water attributes and the content of dry tailings, indicating the ability to accurately predict dry tailing quantities. By employing the proposed methodology to enhance water quality models, it becomes possible to overcome limitations in water quality management and significantly improve the precision of predictions regarding critical water parameters.

Drilling fluid systems have seen the addition of new natural additives in recent years in order to replace traditional additives, improve their rheological properties, and ensure the functionality of the drilling fluid taking into account health and environmental factors. This paper aims to study and compare the effect of the addition of eggshell powder (ESP) as a native and local additive and calcium carbonate (CC) as a traditional and conventional additive on the rheological and filtration properties of the drilling fluid system based on Na-bentonite of the region of Meghnia (Algeria). The test results of 10, 20, and 30 g of CCwerecompared to the same concentrations of ESP.The findings showed that the CC with various concentrations (10, 20, and 30 g) increases the rheological properties and the mud density while it reduces the filter cake and the fluid loss values which are desirable, calcium carbonate had aslightly higher effect on the pH. The obtained results following the addition of ESP with different ratios revealed that the latter has a considerable impact on the plastic viscosity, the yield point, the gel strength, and the cake thickness. Additionally, the effect of the presence of eggshell as an additive in pH, fluid loss, and mud density was studied; we observed a slight increase in the pH, while the fluid loss values decreased. However, the mud density values increased. Beyond 20 g of eggshell, the properties of the mud becomeundesirable. Moreover, this study contributes tonewfindings and suggests that the utilization of waste food and local goods in drilling mud mixtures has a bright future respecting the percentages of use.

Water-soluble polymers are becoming increasingly important in various applications, such as stabilizer fluids and drilling muds. These materials are used as viscosifiers and filtration control agents, flocculants, and deflocculants due to their superior properties in increasing viscosity and gelling ability in the presence of crosslinkers. In general, studying the rheological behavior of drilling fluids is of paramount importance to ensure successful well drilling operations. Partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide is one of the polymers widely used in water-based muds. The main objective of this study is to optimize the rheological properties of drilling muds through a characterization study of various parameters, including rheological behavior, viscosity, temperature (23 °C, 40 °C, and 60 °C), salinity using KCl and NaCl contents, aging, pH, solubility, and structural analysis using infrared of partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide. The study aims to demonstrate the importance of using polymers in drilling muds. The findings revealed that a rate of 3% of HPAM gave better rheological behavior, the influence of KCl (1.5%, 3%, and 4.5%) was greater than that of NaCl (1.5%, 3%, and 4.5%) on polymers, and the aging test showed that the different formulations are stable and maintain their behavior up to 110 °C. The solubility test results confirmed the maximum amount absorbed by polyacrylamide ([C_HPAM] = 66.42 g/L) in order to avoid aggregation, gelification, and enhance the drilling mud by utilizing the prescribed contents.

Environmental protection is becoming a primary objective when choosing processes and technologies for treating oily waters resulting from hydrocarbon production. The focus of treating oily waters is to eliminate contaminants from effluents before discharging them into the receiving environment while adhering to discharge standards. Our work aims to analyze the treatment process for oily waters in the API unit of the North Industrial Center (CINA), which involves a physical–chemical treatment using activated silica and Kurifix. The study aims to improve the treatment process used for oily water treatment to ensure water conservation for reuse. To enhance the CINA-HMD oily water treatment process, we created coagulants with different doses (C1–C6) using sodium silicate, activated silicate (sodium silicate + sulfuric acid), distilled water, Kurifix, and an oxygen scavenger while measuring pH, HC (hydrocarbon), and SS (suspended solids) levels. Coagulation and flocculation processes were used to remove suspended solids and hydrocarbons from the water. The results show that the coagulant used reduces suspended matter and hydrocarbon content and increases pH. The best treatment is achieved with a coagulant prepared with distilled water, 5% sodium silicate, and 2% sulfuric acid. The optimal dose of coagulant is 16 ppm. Automatic dosing provides better efficiency than manual dosing. The study recommends continuous verification of chemical preparation and injection, periodic cleaning of settling tanks, and monitoring of oily water entering the station.