Sharif Digital Repository

Within the past few years, soil and groundwater resources contamination by petroleum-based products has become of great concern in the environmental engineering literature as a serious environmental problem throughout the world. Amongst petroleum hydrocarbons, groundwater contamination by Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs) is one of the most important environmental problems. In order to effectively remediate contaminated sites, knowledge of the distribution of the NAPLs is essential. The success of the remedial design will be dependent on the ability to predict the subsurface distribution of the NAPLs. Release of these compounds from spills and leaky underground storage tanks into subsurface... 

Groundwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions, which the most parts of them have not had enough surface water, is of great importance. Due to the paramount importance of these vital resources, many scholars have conducted various studies on groundwater contamination and, especially, on nitrate as the best indicator of groundwater contamination because of its ability to transport, its low absorption, and its durability in water. In this study, using qualitative methods, groundwater contamination of Mashhad aquifer was evaluated, and then in order to obtain better adjustment with urban areas, these methods were modified which resulted in better correlation with measured nitrat. Based on... 

In recent years, the reductive dehalogenation of the chlorinated hydrocarbons using nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI) represents a promising approach for underground remediation. Regarding commercialization of this technique, instability and unknown nature of nZVI particle are still challenging tasks that should be considered.
In the current work, Nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) and palladized iron (Pd/Fe) bimetallic particles were synthesized and employed to react with chlorinated compound (PCE) in water to investigate its degradation behaviors. The results show that the reactant ratio, stabilizer amount and temperature are the main parameters with the considerable effect on PCE... 

Groundwater is the most important freshwater resource in the coastal zones. There are some factors contaminate fresh groundwaters. Sea water intrusion (SWI) is one of the most important components of groundwater salinization. Also Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) occurs when hydraulic gradient is from landside to seaside in coastal aquifers. There are many factors intensify SWI and SGD. In this research at the first part, coastline shape effect on SWI and SGD is investigated. For to this 4 different aquifers with different coastline shapes as stepped coastline, vertical coastline, steep slope coastline, and mild slope coastline are simulated with the same hydraulic parameters and... 

In this study biological denitrification method by moving bed biofilm reactor is investigated. The main advantage of MBBR reactor is due to their capacity for high removal rates and low operational problems such as clogging. Two MBBRs in series with 3 liter volume each, were designed in experimental set up and used in this research. Nitrification reactor worked under aerobic conditions and denitrification reactor operated under anaerobic conditions. Methanol was used as carbon source in the reactors throughout the study. Fifty percent of each reactor volume was occupied with KMT1 packing. To finding the optimum nitrate loading rate, the concentration of ammonium and nitrate were changed from... 

Incline in the population and civilization, development of agriculture, and expansion of industries, in addition to limitations on surface and groundwater resources necessitate the existence of correct and efficient planning of management and utilization of water resources. Prediction of behavioral models of changes in water resources systems, influenced by utilizing strategies, absolutely helps stakeholders for conservative development of these resources. System dynamics is an object oriented method that is based on system's feedback. Not only it gives real description of complex systems, but also it provides the ability to influence effectively in development of the model for the user. The... 

Increase of concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases will have significant effect on global climate. Climate change affects precipitation and hydrology, which in turn influences recharge to groundwater. Recharge to groundwater is an important source, which has the main role in groundwater resources availability. To trace these changes to recharges and its consequent effect on groundwater state, a combined modeling of climate change and groundwater is necessary. In This study impact of climate change on groundwater recharge in two different climatic plains of Karkheh river basin in Khuzestan, Iran, has been investigated using a physically-based methodology that can be used for... 

The subsidence phenomenon in the past years has caused many problems and issues for the agricultural lands, roads, power transmission lines, energy etc., due to different reasons including over use of groundwater resources and changes in climate. This phenomenon has been observed in different plains of the country including the Khorasan, Kerman, Hamedan, Ghazvin and Isfahan plains and has caused many damages to infrastructure and agricultural products in the mentioned regions. In this research the main factors which have affected the subsidence phenomenon especially reduced ground water table and climate changes in Ardebil plain, are taken into account and some studies which comprise... 

Lake Urmia water level fell dramatically from 2006 to 2014. Since then the declining trend of water level has stopped but the lake has remained in a critical situation. Moreover, Lake Urmia became supersaturated with total salinity averaging more than 350 g/l. Salt precipitation and dissolved materials brought by inflowing rivers have formed a layer of sediment with low hydraulic conductivity on the lakebed. We conducted a series of numerical simulation scenarios to study the groundwater flow pattern in the vicinity of the hypersaline Lake Urmia using COMSOL Multiphysics®. In the first step, we performed the simulations in steady-state conditions. Secondly, we simulated the lake level fall... 

Global climate change and anthropogenic impacts lead to alterations in the water cycle, water resource availability and the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. As a result, developing effective techniques such as hydrological modeling is essential to monitor and predict water storage changes. However, inaccuracies and uncertainties in different aspects of modeling, due to simplification of meteorological physical processes, data limitations and inaccurate climate forcing data limit the reliability of hydrological models. Assimilation of new observations constrains the dynamics of the model based on uncertainties associated with model and data, which can introduce missing water...