El Arish power plant on the Mediterranean coast of Sinai, Egypt. [5] studied the trace metals in water, sediments and marine organisms from the northern part of ...
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering
Ain Shams Journal of Civil Engineering (ASJCE)
Vol. 2. September, 0000, pp. 000-000 Water Quality Changes Due to Al-Sukhna Power Plant N.S. DONIA 1, Ahmed M. A. MOUSSA 2 1. Assistance professor, Environmental Engineering Department, Ain Shams University 2. Researcher, Engineer. Ministers' Technical Office, Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI).
ARTICLE HISTORY Received: 8/7/2010 Accepted: 22/8/2010
ABSTRACT The impact of warm effluent water discharged at the outlets of (Al-Sukhna) power plants to the coastal environment of Gulf of Suez was investigated. First, water and sediment samples were collected and analyzed. A GIS-based framework was built to allow for the analysis of ecological functioning of study area in an integrated way. Moreover, GIS was used to map spatial variations in water quality parameters and sediments in the surface and the bottom. Then, a comparative analysis of water quality between the baseline measurements during the construction of the (Al-Sukhna) Power Plant and the present status measurements was conducted. The results show that anthropogenic inputs contribute to all types of samples and affect sediment and water quality in the study area.
Keywords
Coastal pollution, power plant, GIS, Sediment, Water Quality 1. INTRODUCTION A majority of scientists agree that using seawater for cooling power plants is damaging the coastal ecosystem, especially at bays and estuaries, which are critical nursery habitats for fish. [9] studied the Environmental impacts of El Arish power plant on the Mediterranean coast of Sinai, Egypt. [5] studied the trace metals in water, sediments and marine organisms from the northern part of the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea. [3] studied the State of Marine Pollution in Kuwait: Northern Arabian Gulf. Since the last three decades, major national development had been starting in Egypt, in particular along Gulf of Suez, Red sea, such as roads, power stations, airports, industrial plants, mineral developments and beach resorts. All these projects have a life time, with a number of stages. The impacts on environment of these projects vary considerably [1].
Al-Sukhna Power plant (study area) is located south of Al-Sukhna Port and at about 55km south of Suez city west of the Gulf of Suez, between Latitudes 29o 30' and 30o 00' north and Longitudes 32o 00' and 32o 30' east Fig. 1. An undeveloped area owned by SUMED Petroleum Company bound the southern and western limits of the investigated site, Fig.1. The area considered lies within the down coast saddle of the headland that host the port of AlSukhna. The position of Al-Sukhna power plant station site and its shoreline orientation provide natural protection from waves approaching from the north and northwest directions, and inversely highly exposed to other directions. The orientation and the concave geometry of the shoreline induce this area to act as a sediment sink for fine-grained sediments provided from natural and manmade sources. The first source is the natural torrential rain sediments coming from adjacent
2. STUDY AREA DESCRIPTION 1
N.S. DONIA, Ahmed M. A. MOUSSA
wadis in geological times and the second are the current discharging of disposal sediments originating from dredging works. The coastline of this area is semi-diurnal with gradually decreasing magnitude from two meters near the city of Suez to the nodal zero point at the city of El-Tor, some 210 km to the south. This largely reflects the relevance of water level fluctuations as a controlling environmental factor in this region.
sites were selected to represent the actual situation and diffusion rate of waste water in this area and to represent the effect and advection of any impact of power station output to the marine environment. In the field, the geographic position of these sampling sites are determined using a DGPS “Differential Geographic Positioning System “version Magellan (horizontal accuracy
