Water Chemistry

Water is the main component of human food, being also of extreme need for household and industrial. However, the water is mankind’s most important resource after the air. Economic development and population growth are hugely increasing both the demands on existing resources of water and the environmental pollution in many parts of the world. The development of effective methods to improve the freshness and cleanness of sufficient quantities of water is necessary. The first part of the book contains papers on drinking water standards, watershed protection, and source water composition and its properties in different regions as the distribution system of the U.S, water supplies in the Logone valley (Chad-Cameroon), thermokarst lake waters of western Siberia and groundwater in Sukhodol Bay. The next part of the book gives an overview of the methods for water monitoring and quality evaluation of water pollution level. Optical molecular method and biological monitoring to detect and distinguish a wide range of impurities are discussed. Other methods, which use single factor pollution index, comprehensive pollution index and self-propelled nanomotors to explore the main water pollutants, are outlined. The traditional treatment technologies, discussed in the third part of the book, remain ineffective for providing cleaned water due to increasing demand of the water supplies. Nanotechnology-based multifunctional and highly efficient processes are providing affordable solutions to water/wastewater treatments that do not rely on large infrastructures or centralized systems. Other techniques for water treatment as adsorption and photocatalytic ozonation, due to their simple operation and effectiveness, are demonstrated to be between of the most effective and convenient approaches. Mostly, the pollutants in the environment include a different group of compounds, as pharmaceuticals drugs, personal-care products, surfactants, industrial additives and agents, heavy metal and toxic mineral. In this book are given examples from each of the groups mentioned above.