DWESD Drinking Water Engineering and Science Discussions DWESD Drink. Water Eng. Sci. Discuss. 1996-9481 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/dwes-2018-41 Optimization shallow groundwater quality by the application of photocatalysis treatment technique in El Obour city, Egypt Seleem El-Montser M. 1 El Nazer Hossam A. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9168-3254 2 Zeid Salah A. M. 1 Salman Salman A. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2173-0438 3 Abdel-Hafiz Mahmoud A. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7640-7067 1 Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, Assiut, Egypt Chemical Sciences Department, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt Geological Sciences Department, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt 20 12 2018 2018 1 17 Copyright: © 2018 El-Montser M. Seleem et al. 2018 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://dwes.copernicus.org/preprints/dwes-2018-41.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://dwes.copernicus.org/preprints/dwes-2018-41.pdf

<p>Collection of shallow groundwater and injecting it into the underline Miocene aquifer is a great environmental problem on the groundwater resources at El Obour city and environs. The present research work aims to investigate this water quality and validity of photocatalytic treatment of polluted water using nano-titania in presence of solar radiation. Twenty-eight representative samples were collected from various locations and their physical, chemical and microbial characteristics were determined. Bacteria analysis has been investigated for the presence of total bacterial count and indicator bacteria include total coliform, fecal coliform and fecal streptococci. The heavy metal analysis shows that more than 85&thinsp;% of the samples could be used for drinking in comparison with WHO specification for drinking water. The main pollutants in these samples are Cd and Pb. All the studied samples contain a viable count of heterotrophic bacteria, total coliform, fecal coliform and fecal streptococci, indicating the contamination with human and animal fecal material. The high number of indicator microorganism counts observed reflected the poor quality of water. The photocatalytic technique shows high efficiency towards the removal of more than 95&thinsp;% and 82&thinsp;% of microbial pollutants and organic residuals; respectively.</p>