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Shallow groundwater environmental investigation at northeastern Cairo, Egypt: quality and photo-treatment evaluation

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Abstract

Groundwater represents the primary source of freshwater for more than 35% of world people, and its contamination became a worldwide challenge. Egypt is suffering from water quantity and quality, especially in desert areas. El Obour city and environs Northeast Cairo face waterlogging owing to the elevated-shallow groundwater table. In the present research work, the water quality of the shallow groundwater aquifer was studied. The remediation efficiency of polluted water using photocatalytic treatment technique in the presence of modified nano-titania and solar radiation has also been investigated. Twenty-eight representative samples have been collected from different locations, and their microbial, physical, and chemical characteristics were determined. The average contents of Pb (214.96 µg/L), As (1517 µg/L), Cd (8.79 µg/L), total bacterial count (2.22 × 105 CFU/ml), and bacterial indicators (MPN-index/100 ml): total coliform (497.4), fecal coliform (358.3), and fecal streptococci (115.9) were higher than WHO permissible limits for drinking water, possibly due to higher industrialization, agricultural, and urbanization rates. The organic pollutants reached critical concentrations (chemical oxygen demand up to 960.8 mg O2/L). Most of the studied samples contained acceptable concentrations of the major ions, (e.g., K+, Mg2+, HCO3−), for drinking and irrigation purposes. The statistical analyses (e.g., principal component analysis and cluster analysis) pointed out the control of water–rock interaction and anthropogenic activities in water composition. The hydrochemical data show that most of the water samples (96.4%) are Na2SO4 and NaHCO3 type, indicating its meteoric origin. The contamination with human and animal fecal substances, NO3¯, and NH4+ was identified in all samples, which pointed out the control of anthropogenic activities in water pollution. The photocatalytic technique efficiently eliminated more than 82–95% of organic contents and microbial pollutants, respectively, but it was inefficient in reducing heavy metal levels. According to the current results, shallow groundwater injection into the deep aquifer must be constrained and reusable after treatment. Finally, more studies are imperative to disseminate the applied treatment techniques to elude bacteria and organic pollutants from water at a pilot scale.

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Data availability

The data are provided in the article and the Supplementary Material.

Code availability

This research uses the following software: Microsoft Word (Office365), Microsoft Excel (Office 365), ArcGIS (v.10.4), Surfer, SPSS 21, XLSTAT (USA), FastStone (v.9.0), Sigma Plot, Edraw Max (v.10).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the CAS-TWAS president doctoral fellowship program. The authors are grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments which enhanced the paper's quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Geochemistry, Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 99 Lincheng West Road, Guanshanhu district, Guiyang, 550081, China

    Mahmoud A. Abdelhafiz & Bo Meng

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Mahmoud A. Abdelhafiz

  3. Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, Assiut, 71524, Egypt

    Mahmoud A. Abdelhafiz, El-Montser M. Seleem & Salah A. M. Zeid

  4. Photochemistry Department, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt

    Hossam A. El Nazer

  5. Geological Sciences Department, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt

    Salman A. Salman

Authors
  1. Mahmoud A. Abdelhafiz
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  2. El-Montser M. Seleem
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  3. Hossam A. El Nazer
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  4. Salah A. M. Zeid
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  5. Salman A. Salman
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  6. Bo Meng
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Contributions

All authors contributed significantly toward the final makeup of the paper. MAA and SAS contributed to conceptualization, investigation, formal analysis, visualization, data curation, writing—review and editing, and validation; EMS contributed to conceptualization, data collection, visualization and validation; HAEN contributed to formal analysis, investigation, writing and editing; SAMZ conceived the idea of the study, conceptualization and validation; BM helped in supervision, conceptualization, review—revision and editing, discussed the results, and provided valuable feedbacks after proofreading. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to El-Montser M. Seleem or Bo Meng.

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Abdelhafiz, M.A., Seleem, EM.M., El Nazer, H.A. et al. Shallow groundwater environmental investigation at northeastern Cairo, Egypt: quality and photo-treatment evaluation. Environ Geochem Health 43, 4533–4551 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-00933-y

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