HYDRAULIC ASSESSMENT OF MEDIA FILTERS UTILIZING TREATED WASTEWATER FOR COTTON IRRIGATION

Key Words: Media filter, Treated wastewater, Drip irrigation, Cotton Growth and Yield.INTRODUCTIONAccording to Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWIR), Egypt (2014) Agriculture expends a large amount of the obtainable water in Egypt, with its share exceeding 85% of the total demand for water. Utilizing treated wastewater represents a viable option. The study were carried out at Sarapium Forest, Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in “Sarapium”, Ismailia Governorate, Egypt, during 2018 and 2019 seasons to investigate the effect of media depth on the performance of different types of emitters for irrgating cotton (verity Giza 94) using treated wastewater. Also this study estimates the effect of using treated wastewater on the cotton growth, quantity and quality. The first experiment design for filtration performance was a split-plot with four replications. The main plots involved two media filtration depths (50 cm and 70 cm) and the sub-plots involved the time of operation (0, 25, 50, 75 and 100h). While the second experiment design for planting cotton was a split-plot with three replications. The main plots involved two plant distribution (Mutual and Opposite) and the sub-plots involved the three types of emitters namely: online 4 l/h compensative, online 4 l/h non-compensative and built- in 4 l/h-30cm non-compensative the distance between emitters were (30 cm).The results indicated that: Increasing media filtration depth from 50 to 70 cm has led to decrease the filtration flowrate with increasing pressure losses, biological oxygen demand (BOD5) and total suspended solids (TSS). The filtration flowrate decreased by increasing operation time from 0 to 100 but pressure losses, BOD5 and TSS was increased. Emitters performance of online compensative and built-in non-compensative were generally better than the online non-compensative under using wastewater quality and emitters performance decrease by increasing operation time from zero to 100 hours. Plants distribution significantly effect on growth and yield components of cotton. Planting cotton by mutual method gave the highest values of number of opened bolls per plant, seed cotton yield (Ken./fed.)