Assessment of River Bank filtration for the removal of some chemical pollutants under different climate and environmental conditions

Abstract

Riverbank filtrations is a promising technique for securing supply of clean water. It is a widespread water management operation where bank sediments are used as a pretreatment option for substantively reducing the quantity of many common microbial and chemical contaminants (Linsky, et al., 2002a). This technique had been experienced for many hundred years in Europe and North America, However, its application in developing countries is still rare (Hamdan et al., 2013). Bank filtration draws water from wells that are hydraulically connected to a surface water resource. As a result of pumping, a pressure head gradient is established between the river and the wells that induce the water to flow from the surface water system towards the bank filtration wells provided that there are no low hydraulic conductivity layers such as clay, artificial or natural barriers to this subterranean flow exist (Hiscock and Grischek, 2002). Bank filtration has a high potential to reduce the concentrations of various chemical and biological contaminants such as turbidity, dissolved chemicals, natural organic matter and microbes. The bed and the bank of the surface water system act as a barrier to attenuate the surface water pollutants. This research revealed that bank filtration is applicable in Egypt and has a high ability to remove the pollutants. a field study was conducted at Minya Governate to evaluate the effectiveness of this technique under these hot climate weather. The results referred that bank filtration is able to remove the organic matter to a high extent. The organic matter was decreased by 50% during the filtration processes at all the study areas