Abstract
In the study area, groundwater is the main water resource for various purposes such as drinking, agriculture and industrial. To evaluate the hydrochemical characteristics of groundwater and suitability for drinking, irrigation and industrial purposes, seventy-seven samples were collected and analyzed for various ions. Results show that, groundwater in the study area is mainly hard to very hard, and slightly alkaline-fresh to brackish in nature. According to the hydrochemistry diagrams, the main groundwater types are Ca, Mg-HCO3, Na-HCO3 and Na-Cl. Calculation of mineral saturation index indicate that the groundwater samples are saturated with respect to carbonate minerals and under-saturated with respect to sulfate minerals such as gypsum and anhydride. The mineral weathering, mixing, ion exchange and anthropogenic activity are the dominant hydrogeochemical natural processes. Results of investigating the quality of heavy metals and calculating the heavy metal index indicated that the groundwater of study area is not contaminated with heavy metals. In this research, the various indices were used to determine the quality of groundwater for various uses. Calculate the indices and comparison results with the WHO standards to determine the quality of groundwater for various uses indicated that the most of the groundwater in study area is chemically suitable for drinking, industrial and agricultural uses.
Highlights
Groundwater is the major source of water for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes in many countries
Large variations in electrical conductivity (EC) and total dissolved solids (TDS) values are primarily attributed to geochemical process like ion exchange, evaporation, sediment dissolution, and rainwater infiltration (Ehya and Marbouti 2016) and anthropogenic sources (Hosseinifard and Mirzaei Aminiyan 2015)
The results show that groundwater of study area are not contaminated with heavy metals
Summary
Groundwater is the major source of water for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes in many countries. The rapid increase in the population of the country has led to large scale groundwater developments in some areas. Hydrogeochemical processes that are responsible for altering the chemical composition of groundwater vary with respect to space and time. Chemical characteristics of groundwater play an important role in assessing and classifying the quality of water. Groundwater quality depends on a number of factors such as geology, degree of chemical weathering of the various rock types, quality of recharge water, and water– rock interaction (Domenico and Schwartz 1990; Guler and Thyne 2004; Ayenew et al 2008; Giridharan et al 2008; Aly 2015)
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