Evaluation of Efficiency of Groundwater Desalination Plants in Different Hydrogeological Conditions in Salahaddin Governorate/ Iraq

Abstract

Five groundwater desalination plants elected in the province of Salahuddin, these plants are Rimth, AlRaml, Albo Hamed, Albo Rahil, and Mcelila which supplied from Al-Naamah, Zgiton, Baiji-Tikrit, West Samarra, and West Makhoul hydrogeological basins respectively.

Hydrogeological, hydraulic and hydrochemical characteristics of the five sub- basins were reviewed, it is found that the selection of the locations of these stations did not depend on certain criteria, especially the hydrochemical parameters which are the principal in the desalination. So, there are a lot of wells in these sub-basins, have best quality than the supply wells of the stations under study.

17samples were collected for selected desalination stations, three or four samples for each station included raw water (well water), desalinated water, mixed desalinated water, and rejected water, the field and laboratory tests were conducted on the different types of sampled water, the concentrations of more than seventy element were measured, included major anions and cations, minor and trace elements, the results were compared with local and international standards for drinking water. it is found that the raw water unsuitable for human use, the desalinated and mixed desalinated water are within the allowable limits of these standard, but these standards ignored most of the trace elements which were not discussed in the documents that annexed with these standard, and did not specify the permitted upper limits, despite the that some of these elements increases in the desalinated water in comparison with the raw water, light has been focused to the negative effects of these elements on public health.

The efficiency of desalination evaluated for these stations depending on the qualitative standards, then, the qualitative criteria were adopted for quantitative evaluation, and show that the stations with high efficiency, its efficiency in removing dissolved solids (TDS) ranged between (81.31% - 98.18%), regarding to quantitative desalination efficiency, the percentage of desalinated water to the raw ranged between (29% -70.37%).