Environmental monitoring and catalytic reduction of chromium(vi) present in ground water in and around sohar industrial estate of sultanate of oman.

Sohar Industrial Estate (SIE), one of the six industrial estates in Sultanate of Oman, was established in 1991. SIE involves many companies with different types of products. SIE has a number of different Petrochemical companies such as Oman Refinery, Oman Polypropylene, Oman aromatic Company, Oman Methanol, and Sohar Fertilizer, as well as many metal based industries. In addition, the neighboring Sohar Industrial Estate houses a range of small to medium sized enterprises. The SIE is very close to the residential houses at Falaj Al-Qabaeel Village and adjacent to Sohar port. Hence, the leaching and concentrations of heavy metals are expected to increase in ground water as well as surface water of this area. The presence of heavy metals in aquatic bodies is known to cause pollution. The major source of heavy metals is the improper discharge of wastewaters from various industrial activities. Among the various heavy metals, Chromium(VI) is a common contaminant in the wastewaters arising from electroplating, mining, fertilizers, leather tanning, chromate manufacturing, steel alloys, and photographic materials. Therefore it is important to monitor and quantify the level of Cr(VI) concentrations in the ground water of SIE and to undertake remedial measure. Many published papers on heavy metal pollution in ground water have been conducted in several parts of the world. In Oman, there have been no published studies conducted to investigate the levels of heavy metals, particularly chromium(VI) released from industries in the Sohar Industrial Estate. This project proposal focusing on the environmental monitoring and development of visible light active nanostructured material for not only acting as adsorption of chromium(VI) but also acting as the photocatalyst for the reduction of Chromium(VI) present in synthetic wastewater as well as ground water collected from in and around Sohar Industrial Estate of Oman. The proposed project can be achieved at a relatively cost effective and to initiate our research activities and establish environmental monitoring laboratory at Department of Chemistry, SQU for different environmental applications.