The effectiveness of artificial recharge in combating seawater intrusion in Salalah coastal aquifer, Oman |
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Authors: | Mahaad I Shammas |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Land and Water Resources Engineering, The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), 100-44 Stockholm, Sweden |
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Abstract: | The Salalah central sewage treatment plant has been designed to treat 20,000 m3/day at the first stage and two further stages to double the initial capacity. The plant currently (2005) treats more than
15,000 m3/day effluents to a tertiary level, and after chlorination phase, the effluents are recharged into tube wells in a line parallel
to the coast. The process aims to help stabilize the seawater interface and a part to be recovered from hand-dug wells/boreholes
further inland and downstream. A three-dimensional flow and solute advection transport model was developed to assess the effectiveness
of the proposed recharge scheme and to track the solute transport with respect to the design system. The advection transport
model predicted that in 2020 the maximum pathlines of the injection fluids would reach the abstraction wells that are located
600 m, southward of the injection bores in about 1-year travel time in the case of the no-management interference and more
than that southward under management interference. The developed flow predicted the wedge of the saline intrusion in 2019
is tracked up to 2.7 and 3.4 km from the shoreline with the injection and without the injection, respectively under constant
underflow. The injection scheme is effective in pushing back the saline zone front by 700 m. This study argues that the treated
wastewater would help to increase the water levels at the vicinity of the injection line and to reduce the influence of saline
inflows from the coast. The reclaimed sewage recharge scheme is examined in the case of the Salalah coastal aquifer using
groundwater simulation, which can also be applied to other regions with similar conditions. |
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Keywords: | Salalah coastal aquifer Artificial recharge Injection bores Treated municipal sewage and salinity |
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