Assessment of Water Quality for River Bank Filtration in Egypt

Abstract

RBF is a green water treatment technology in which wells were constructed along the river's side and river water was abstracted using pumps in the abstraction wells. Natural processes attenuate the pollutants. It does not require as many periodic treatments as many standard treatment processes, it may be a cost-effective treatment solution for small utilities that rely on surface water supplies to deliver high-quality source water with low subsequent treatment needs. The Sohag government opted to use the RBF technology to expand the capacity of the West Sohag WTP. Two abstraction wells were placed along the Nile River at west Sohag in addition to the disinfection units. The main objective of this study was to assess the RBF system at west Sohag. The RBF system has been assessed using a groundwater flow model and field observations. A numerical model was utilized to simulate the hydraulics of the proposed RBF system and management scenarios. MODFLOW 2000 and MODPATH, were used under the platform of GMS 10.2.3 to simulate the groundwater flow and the travel time. The simulation was run for steady-state. The measurements and analyses of samples were done following Egyptian standards. The model results confirmed on high performance for the RBF system in addition the water quality results confirmed on the high efficiency for the system.