Maharlou lake located in southwest of Iran is an intra-continental sedimentary basin. Its area is about 280 km: extended with an average water depth of 1.5 m during wet seasons. The water level in the lake is controlled by several factors such as Runoff volume from Maharlou catchment underground water seepage, and direct rainfall over the lake and also evaporation. Generally, hydrochemical analysis of water resources showed that the water types are mainly bicarbonates and sulfates due to Geology of the surrounding areas. Hydrochemical investigation has been carried out for a time period between 1975 and 2002 usingpreviously published analyses together with new collected water samples. 230 samples were collected during summer 200I. Summer 2002 and spring 2005. Results show a change in the brine type through time: with an Mg-SO4-CI type in 1970 toan Mg-CI-SO4 type in 2001 and currently Na-Mg-CI brine type, in recent time, which is comparable with Great Salt Lake in USA. Due to changes in diluted water compositions from HCO3³ (Ca+Mg) to HCO3« (Ca+Mg), the path of brine on the Eugster and Hardie flow diagram changes from row III to the path It, indicating that the bicarbonate water comes into the lake From a fault occurring in the lake floor.

Among various desalination methods, reverse osmosis (RO) has emerged as the most widely adopted technology due to its efficiency and the availability of advanced polymeric membranes 1. This method not only produces potable water but is also increasingly utilized in tertiary wastewater treatment. . .

brine shrimp (Artemia.) is fascinating organism from subphylum Crustacean, order Branchiopoda, family Artemiidae. Artemia brine shrimps inhabit saline and hypersaline ecosystems and have many tolerance against salinity changes. Urmiah Lake is the most important habitate of Artemia in Iran. Artemia is also reported from Kale-shour located in 35 km north of Gonabad, south khorassan province, Iran. In this study collected Artemia from Gonabad Kale-shour were compared with Artemia urmiana Gunther (1900) and Artemia parthenogenetica from Urmiah Lack using morphometric characters. Cysts samples collected from Kale-shour and Artemia urmiana and Artemia parthenogenetica were obtained from Urmiah Fisheries Company (shilat) Research Center. The Cysts were cultured separately in 20 L aquarium approximately under constant physical and chemical conditions (salinity 62 ppt, temperature 20 ± 1 C°, PH  » 8, slowly and continually aeration, flourscent light with 40 cm distance from aquarium surface). All samples were fed with rice bran and unicellular algae. After 35 days 30 chosen mature female of each culture were narcotized with chloroform and eight quantitative characters (total length, abdominal length, abdominal width, length of furca, head width, distance between compound eyes, eyes diameter, length of the first antenna) were measured under measuring microscope to the nearest 0.001 mm. Data were analysis using the statistical software SPSS 10 and multivariate analysis, result show that Kale-shour Artemia are significantly different from Artemia urmiana, but the Kale-shour Artemia and A. Parthenogenrtica are identical. Two populations could belong to A.parthenogenetica species.

brine Concentration is a comprehensive process and has an effective role in reducing environmental pollution due to desalination plant wastewater. In this study, the equations, for feed-forward forced convective falling film brine concentrators, with the desired number of effects and thermal vapor compression have been solved by MATLAB code. Thermodynamic modeling results of a two stage brine concentrator represented that 6.25 ton/hr feed with 90000 ppm concentration produces 5 ton/hr fresh water and 1.25 ton/hr wastewater with 450000 ppm concentration. The gained output ratio of plant is 2.63 and the specific heat transfer area is 74.3 m2s/kg. Also, by thermohydraulic modeling, to control the sediment rate with the limitations of allowable pressure drop and stream velocity in different tube lengths and diameters and evaporator number of passes, heat transfer area and the number of tubes have been calculated. Finally, the effects of design variables on gained output ratio and specific heat transfer area are investigated. The results represented that effects number, feed, and driving steam temperature are the three most important variables since increasing the effects number causes a 17% increase in gained output ratio and 23.5% increase in the specific heat transfer area. Increasing 1 ֯C in feed and motive vapor temperature lead to a 2.5% increase and 3% decrease in the specific heat transfer area. But these two don’t have any effect on gained output ratio.

Seawater desalination is recently considered as an important source for providing drinking water largely due to the increased water consumption as well as depletion of available and accessible water resources. This is especially important in case of Iran which is located in an arid region facing the challenges of water resources shortage. Due to the progressive development of seawater desalination processes, the discharge of brine can potentially bring about physical, chemical, and ecological effects on the environment of receiving water resources. Therefore, the necessity of more accurate and better understanding of such effects and different aspects of desalination processes as well as the brine as the by-product is undeniable. The focus in the present paper is investigation on the effects of brine discharge on the quality of various parameters in the receiving water and providing solutions for minimizing the side-effects. Techniques such as use of cooling water in power plants, combination of brine with municipal sewage, groundwater desalination, and proper selection of sites and discharge procedures are among the practical proposed strategies.

In this research, the effect of salinity on engineering characteristics of sandstones is investigated. For this purpose, two sandstones from abutments and rock fill (Rip-Rap) of Vanyar dam (in Eastern Azerbaijan province) were selected in addition to three water samples (drinking water, semi-brine and brine) to saturate these rock samples. Water content, uniaxial compressive, point load, thawing and freezing, sound velocity, and durability tests were carried out on dry and saturated samples at different time intervals. After 5 months of submerging type 1 and 2 sandstones in brine water, the uniaxial compressive strength values were decreased 13 and 4%, respectively, and after 10 months to 12 and 0.2%, respectively, compared to those of samples prepared using drinking water. By increasing the salinity of the water, the durability values after 10 cycles changed from 2.3 to 4.2% and from 1.8 to 3.2% for sandstones types 1 and 2, respectively. The sound velocity in a dry sample of sandstones types 1 and 2 was measured as 4450 and 4950 m/sec, respectively, while they reached 4699 and 5255 m/sec, respectively, by increasing salinity. The results show that brine water almost has no effect on thawing and freezing.

Desalination plants have become invaluable solutions especially where freshwater resources are scarce. However, the byproduct of their operation is an outflow which is more saline and heated than the ambient water body. This heated plume adversely affects the ecosystem if it is not treated properly. In this study, 3D finite volume coastal and ocean model is employed to address this issue close to Qeshm Island. In addition to calibrating the model, two alternatives are simulated and discussed to mitigate the adverse effects of the heated plume. It is shown that the plume tends to move in the upper layer of the water column due to its lower density than the ambient water. By moving the outfall to deeper parts of the sea-10-meter-deep-the negative effects of the plume significantly decrease, and as a result, it fulfills the Iran national guidelines. Moreover, due to the mechanism of the Qeshm desalination plant, the spread of salinity is of the least importance compared to the increase in temperature.