• Quality of Water Resources in Kufra Basin, SE Libya

    Mabrouk M. Salama1 and Saad K. El Ebaidi2

    1. Department of chemistry, University of Benghazi, Benghazi, Libya.
    2. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Benghazi, Benghazi, Libya.

    Abstract: Kufra basin has a maximum thickness of 900 m, where located in the south-eastern part of Cyrenaica in Libya and covers of about 400,000.00 km2. The sediments of the Kufra basin are mainly continental or marginally marine sandstones clays and shales, The large central part of the kufra basin was occupied by the Upper Cretaceous Nubian sandstone. The Nubian sandstone is one of the major sedimentary basins occur in eastern Libya. Information from water wells drilled in the Kufra basin indicates that Nubian sandstone consists mainly of unconsolidated sandstones interbedded with varying amounts of clays and shales. The main water resources studied in Kufra are derived from the ground water drilling wells are variable in depth where the total depths are ranging in meter from 140 m to 333 m. This paper focus on the parameters including pH values of 7.16 to 7.35, electrical conductivity (E.C) values of 104.8 to 1800 mg/l. The water quality is very fresh with dissolved solids (T.D.S) typically less than 162 mg/l, sodium (20.02 – 295 mg/l), potassium (4.48 – 23 mg/l), magnesium (9.15 –25.25 mg/l and calcium (15 –75 mg/l). The microbiological analysis showed that the ground water in Kufra is drinkable and free of any environmentally harmful pollutants. The available chemical analyses are in accordance with the Libyan and World Health Authority (WHO) would indicate an acceptable Drinking Water Standards.

    Pages: 391 – 398 | Full PDF Paper