17-08-2012, 04:52 PM
Physico-Chemical Analysis Of Ganga River Water
Physico-Chemical Analysis Of Ganga River Water.pdf (Size: 422.94 KB / Downloads: 77)
INTRODUCTION:
Water resources and water quality affect the economic, social and political development of the
society. Ganga plain is one of the most densely populated regions of the world, due to its availability
of water, fertile soil and suitable landscape. Density of river is high in eastern UP. Rivers are
considered as lifeline but are now adversely affecting the population of fluvial hazards (Singh,
2007).Today, over 29 cities, 70 towns, and thousands of villages extend along the Ganga banks.
Nearly all of their sewage - over 1.3 billion liters per day - goes directly into the river, along with
thousands of animal carcasses, mainly cattle (Bharadwaj et al 2011). Another 260 million liters of
industrial waste are added to this by hundreds of factories along the rivers banks. Domestic and
industrial wastewater constitute as a constant polluting source, whereas surface runoff is a seasonal
phenomena mainly controlled by climate (Singh et al,2004). Municipal sewage constitutes 80 per cent
by volume of the total waste dumped into the Ganga, and industries contribute about 15 percent. The
majority of the Ganga pollution is organic waste, sewage, trash, food, and human and animal remains.
Over the past century, city populations along the Ganga have grown at a tremendous rate, while
waste-control infrastructure has remained relatively unchanged. Recent water samples collected in
Varanasi revealed fecal-coliform counts of about 50,000 bacteria per 100 milliliters of water, 10,000%
higher than the government standard for safe river bathing. The result of this pollution is an array of
water-borne diseases including cholera, hepatitis, typhoid and amoebic dysentery.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION:
Details of water analysis (Pignatello et al 1999, and Yeom et al 1995) are present in Table 1-6.
Colour:- All the samples were colourless except industrial waste water and canal water which shows
more contamination of these samples 5 and 6
Odour:- All the samples were colourless, except sample 5 and 6 which was found to be smelling foul.
pH:- Sample 2 was having the minimum pH of 6.68 whereas sample 4 was having the maximum pH
of 8.29.
Alkalinity:- According to WHO standards HDL and MPL of for total alkalinity is 200-600 ppm. All
samples show very high deviations from this value except sample 5 and 6 which contained only
carbonate and bicarbonate ions. Hydroxyl ion (OH-) was absent in these two samples.
Total Hardness:- According to WHO standards, HDL and MPL of total hardness is 300-600 ppm. All
the samples analysed for total hardness.
CONCLUSION:
A large number of factors and geological conditions influence the correlations between
different pairs of physico-chemical parameters of water samples.From the present study we conclude
that Ganga water is most probably not fit for drinking and its need to be treated to reduce the
contaminations specially the alkalinity and hardness. To minimize the contamination of Ganga river
water at Kanpur city the values obtained had their significance level will help in selecting the proper
experimental method used for treatment of water.