Physicochemical and Microbiological Evaluation of Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water Quality in Babylon Province, Iraq
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Abstract
The physical, chemical and microbiological quality of drinking water produced from 25 reverse osmosis (RO) plants in five districts of Babylon Province, Iraq was assessed by applying the Canadian Water Quality Index (WQI). Systematic sampling of water for water quality assessment was undertaken from October 2024 to February 2025. Results showed that pH was between 6.1 to 7.8. Conductivity difference was noted to be large, between 10 and 360 μS/cm, whereas TDS exhibited between 6.14 and 225 mg/L, indicating the outstanding salt rejection in range of from ~90–99.5%. Total hardness showed a significant decrease (10-270 mg/L) with calcium hardness and magnesium hardness decreasing from 1 to 28 mg/L, and 1.458 to 62.694 mg/L, respectively; the concentrations of ions significantly decreased: chloride (11.85-49.98 mg/L), nitrate (0-0.024 mg/), sulfate (0.698-15.938 mg/). Counts of the total bacteria and coliforms were ranging from 177-301CFU/mL and 0-27CFU/100mL respectively in the sites based on microbial test. Based on WQI evaluation, 64% (n=16) of the samples were ranked to be excellent quality(0-25), 24%(n=6) good quality (26-50) and 12% (n=3) was poor quality(51-75). This integrated approach of the great extent study clearly verifies that RO technology has an outstanding performance to remove physicochemical contaminants, while presenting ongoing mastering difficulties such as microbiological safety and aluminum contamination to require more specific applicable guidelines in monitoring actions and regular maintenance works for their optimal operations.
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