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Go to Editorial ManagerShatt Al-Arab river has been used as the raw material for the drinking water, irrigation and fish purposes in Basrah city. Concurrently, this river has been polluted by domestic, farming and industrial waste. Three main factories lie on the bank of Shatt Al-Arab river: Al-Hartha Paper Mill, Hartha Power Station and Al-Najibia Power Plant. All these consume water from the river and return their wastewater back to it. The aim of this study is to assess the water quality of Shatt Al-Arab river and its suitability for drinking, irrigation and aquatic life through physicochemical analysis temperature, pH, EC, Total Dissolve Solid (TDS), Cl − , Na + , K + , Ca +2 , Mg+2, HCO 3 total hardness, Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD). BOD5 concentration near factories showed polluted water, unsafe and requiring costly treatment to use for drinking water. Sodium concentration is a key factor for irrigation, which represent by SAR and SSP. As SSP exceed 75.73 % in water near these factories, this could breakdown soil structure and can damage agriculture area. The high concentrations of BOD5 and COD could pose a threat to aquatic life and fishes. As Shatt Al-Arab river is used for different purpose, the result in this study showed polluted water near industrial areas. Therefore, it is recommended to have regular data on water quality for this river near these areas.
Fluidized bed reactor (FBR) is an attached growth system used mainly for biological treatment of industrial wastewater of high organic content. These wastewaters are usually resulted from refineries and milk, starch, and olive oil industries. The objective of this study is to investigate the use of fluidized bed reactor for treating sanitary sewage. The study was accomplished using a pilot plant of the FBR. The pilot plant was constructed and installed in Hamdan Sewage Treatment Plant in Basrah governorate. That was to maintain continuous source of settled sewage which is the influent to the FBR. The period of plant operation was nine weeks. During, this period, the plant was operated at three phases of different conditions (up flow velocity and recirculation ratio). To study the performance of FBR, the main measured parameters were; BOD, DO, VSS, pH, and temperature. The most important conclusions of this study are; (1) the maximum efficiency of BOD removal is 78.6% which was obtained for hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 24min and upflow velocity of 1.59m/min, (2) the effluent BOD values during phases-1 and 2 of plant operation match that of stabilization ponds and trickling filters and during phase-3 matches that activated sludge process, (3) during all operation phases, the values of effluent pH are within the limits specified in national standards of secondary effluents, (4) as F/M increases, the efficiency of BOD removal decreases and the maximum efficiency of BOD removal (78.6%) was obtained at F/M ratio equals 23.47 day -1 , and (5) the HRT of fluidized bed reactor is on order of minutes, while, the values of HRT of activated sludge systems and stabilization ponds are on order of hours and days, respectively.