(248l) Simulating the Effect of Changing the Effluent PATH of OMAR-Bek Drain in the Damietta Branch Water Quality

The Omar-Bek drain represents the main source of water pollution along the Damietta branch of the Nile River, Egypt, where it receives about 600,000 m³/day of untreated domestic, agricultural, and industrial wastes. The main purpose of this research is to effectively manage water quality at the Damietta branch, involving a comparison between the existing situation and two proposed scenarios. The first scenario involved changing the effluent path of the Omar-Bek drain to another drain called ?Main Western drain?. The second scenario centered around improving water quality at the Omar-Bek drain by constructing a WWTP with a design capacity of more than 150,000 m³/day and by improving water quality at this drain by increasing the efficiency of WWTPs that daily discharge about 60,000 m³ of partially treated wastewater to the drain. A new river pollutant (RP) modeling has been created using MATLAB software to simulate pollutant transport in the Damietta branch. This software has been created using mass balance principles and contaminant exponential decay equations. River pollutant (RP) modeling is used to calculate water quality parameters such as total organic carbon (TOC), chlorides (Cl^-), biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, and temperature. The current situation and the two proposed scenarios were simulated using the RP modeling. It was concluded that the Omar-Bek drain has no significant effect on the Damietta branch water quality. As a result, it is recommended not to change the path of the drain, along with preventing the direct discharge of domestic wastewater to the Omar-Bek drain and improving the efficiency of the existing WWTPs discharging to the drain.

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