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 Nandika Miguntanna
Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, Research Portfolio
Thesis Title: Nutrients build-up and wash-off processes in urban land uses.
Current Thesis Abstract: Chemical impact of stormwater pollutants to degrade the water quality is an important issue. In order to mitigate these impacts it is essential to facilitate best management practices. Therefore, it is important to develop detail understanding regarding chemical impact of pollutants on deterioration of water quality.
Nutrients have been recognized as one of the important stormwater pollutants. Nutrients build –up and wash-off processes are complex and varying with various parameters such as different landuses, rainfall intensity and type of impervious surfaces. The knowledge relating to these parameters which influence on nutrients build-up and wash-off processes is still inadequate to implement the better management practices to safeguard the water quality.
The proposed research project primarily investigates nutrients build-up and wash-off processes in different urban landuses such as industrial, residential and commercial . As the occurrence of natural rainfall events is unpredictable, the rainfall simulation technique is used to develop rainfall events with different intensities. The research is confined to impervious surfaces such as road surfaces and parking lots.
The runoff generated from each rainfall events is separated into dissolve and particulate phases and analysed for different nitrogen and phosphorus compounds such as NH 4 + , NH 3, NO 2 - , NO 3 - , TKN , TN , TP and PO4 -3 . The particulate phase is further partitioned into different particle size classes and analyses individually to determine the concentration of nutrients associate with each particle size ranges of sediments. The study also investigates the relationship between nutrients and other water quality parameters, which have a considerable impact on water quality such as TSS, TC, TOC, EC, TDS and pH.
The main objective of the research is to develop knowledge on nutrients build-up and wash-off processes and apply that knowledge to develop mathematical relationships to describe the process kinetics.
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