Use of Nuclear Techniques to Plan Sanitary Strategies in the Almendares River

The Almendares river, one of the most important water bodies of the Havana City, is very polluted. The analysis of parameters as dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand and ammonium is very helpful for the studies aimed to the recovery of the river. There is a growing recognition around the word that the water quality models are very useful tools to plan sanitary strategies for the management of wastewater contamination to predict the effectiveness of control options to improve water quality to desired levels. In the present work, the advective, steady- state, one-dimensional Streeter and Phelps model, calibrated and validated was used to elaborate environment strategies to improve the water quality of the Almendares river. The use of the 99mTc and the Rodamina WT as tracers allowed determining the hydrodynamic parameters necessary for modelling purposes. (Author)