ASSESSMENT OF TRACE METALS USING CHEMOMETRIC ANALYSIS IN KUANTAN RIVER, EAST COAST MALAYSIA

Mohd Fuad Miskon,Kamaruzzaman Yunus,Azman Azid,Fikriah Faudzi

doi:10.26480/jcleanwas.02.2019.01.04

Abstract

Chemometric techniques were applied to identify and assess the trace metals of Kuantan River water. Water samples from nine sampling stations were taken from downstream of the estuary towards the upstream of Kuantan River. The following trace metals were selected for analysis i.e. Hg, Cd, Pb, As, Co and Cr. To evaluate chemical variation on the variables, multivariate statistical methods like principal components analysis (PCA), cluster analysis (CA) and discriminant analysis (DA) were performed. The homogeneity characteristics between the stations were integrated by cluster analysis, which were represented by dendrograms and were classified according to their surrounded activities. PCA was identified four factors namely Cr, Hg, Pb and Co explaining 77.8% of the total variance. PCA revealed that Kuantan River is strongly affected by point sources such as commercial wastewater, industries and non-point sources especially from agriculture activities. The CA classified three clusters as commercial centre (CC), residential areas (RA) and agricultural areas (AA). AA located in the upstream is less polluted than RA, while CC located in the downstream is more polluted than RA. These statistical approaches and results yielded useful information including identification of pollution sources/factors and understanding temporal variations in river water for effective river water quality management.

Highlights

River basin has been a major source of water supply for many purposes and provides fertile lands, which support the development of highly populated residential areas due to its favorable conditions [1]
The results of statistical analysis showed that the mean concentrations of As, Hg, Cd, Cr and Pb were lower than the permissible limit of based on National Water Quality Standard (NWQS) that is, 50 μg L-1, 1 μg L-1, 10 μg L-1, 50 μg L-1 and 50 μg L-1, respectively [16]
This study has shown that based on the data collected on heavy metals along the Kuantan River

Summary

Introduction

River basin has been a major source of water supply for many purposes and provides fertile lands, which support the development of highly populated residential areas due to its favorable conditions [1]. Rivers constitute the main inland water body for domestic, industrial, and agricultural activities and often carry large municipal sewage, industrial wastewater discharges, and seasonal runoff from an agricultural field. The river waters have been contaminated as a result of the discharges of wastewater containing degradable organics, nutrients, domestic effluent and agricultural waste [2]. The aim of this study was to apply the chemometric methods on trace metals data set of Kuantan River in order to identify sources of pollution and explicit latent factors responsible for spatial variations

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion