Chemical Analysis of Drink Water Samples for some Water Purification and Treatment Stations in El-Beida City - Libya and Compared with Residential and Mineral Water

Abstract

This study was conducted in the city of El-Beida-Libya on different samples from 11 drinking water purification and treatment stations, compared with the source water (residential water) and some of the most popular mineral water samples in the  Libyan local markets. During this work, a number of chemical properties of the studied samples were examined, such as pH, Electric Conductivity (EC) (µS/cm),Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) (mg/l), Alkalinity (as HCO3-) (mg/l), Total Hardness (TH) (mg/l), Ca++(mg/l), Mg++ (mg/l), Na+(mg/l), K+ (mg/l), Cl- (mg/l) and NO3- (mg/l). The results obtained in the current study indicate that there are variation among stations. Whereas the pH values were ranged between (5.99 - 7.48), EC values were ranged (10.03 – 590 µS/cm), TDS values were ranged (5 - 283.33), Alkalinity (as HCO3-) values were ranged (44.73- 390.40 mg/l), Total hardness values were ranged (8.01-248.20 mg/l), Ca++ values were ranged (3.2-99.42 mg/l), Mg++ (1.92-59.52 mg/l), Na+ (1.92-23.24 mg/l), K+ (0.03-1.95 mg/l), Cl- (9.46-56.74 mg/l) and NO3- (6.33-12.17 mg/l). Most of the parameters analyzed in this study were within the guidelines given by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Libyan National Centre for Standardization and Metrology ( LNCSM) for drinking water while few others were not. Overall, the water from all the locations was found to be safe as drinking water except for the sample number S8 (Al Nabaa for drinking water purification and treatment), which is considered poor quality in terms of chemical properties specifications.