| Recently, wastewater treatment is necessary to be realised due to their discharges toward rivers and seas without control anyway. The primordial objective of this doctoral work is to determinate the influence of the continues wastewater discharge without treatment to the adjacent marine sediments. A protocol based in thermogravimetric analyses has been worked like an alternative to the traditional ones, with the objective to be shorter and more precise, and be able to guarantied the knowledge of the pollution of marine sediments causes. This fast, exact and systematic protocol is based on the thermogravimetric tests and its correlation with physical-chemistry dates of characterisation in sediments. These sediments has been took in several geographic points near to wastewater discharges in three different ecosystems: Bahia de Cadiz, Cano de Sancti Petri y Palmones. Several equations of lineal regression about estimation of common contaminants like organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorous, HEM and heavy metals (Ni, Cu, Cr, Cd and Zn) have been proposed. Another interest point in this work, was the propose of two quality index. The first one, denominated Descriptive Quality Index, lead the qualitative estimation of the grade of contamination in a sediment by the comparative with other ones characterised previously. The second index, denominated Predictive Quality Index, lead extract the semi-quantitative results. This index have also lead established the catalogue of the sediments thanks to the lineal correlation between different parameters and the thermogravimetric results. This catalogue is based on the national and international normative that actually is been applied, and determines the contamination grade. Finally, a more property methodology to determinate the content of organic matter was found, by the ignition gravimetric technical during two hours and 360°C. This method established the next experimental relation: % MO = 1.77 * (% CO). |
