Chemistry Project 

Water Quality

Water quality refers to the condition of the water, which includes its chemical, physical and biological characteristic - the quality of a water is comes into play when figuring out its suitability for a particular purpose. Water quality can be tested in multiple ways, the simplest of which is to purchase a Home Water Testing Kit, these kits can easily be purchased online by anyone and have simple instructions that are easy to follow, thus making it one of the more convenient ways to test water quality. Good water quality is important to sustain ecological processes that support fish populations, vegetation, wetlands and birdlife. If water in lakes, for example, are polluted it could wreck havoc on the ecological balance by stimulating plant growth and causing the death of animals living in the lake such as fishes by suffocating them with the lack of oxygen in the water, the polluted water would also affect other land animals who depend on the lake water. 

Jurong Eco Garden - CleanTech Park 

The main separation technique utilised in Jurong Eco Garden is cleansing biotopes, cleansing biotopes offer effective water treatment while also being able to maintain a natural and beautiful environment. Cleansing biotopes consists of carefully chosen plants in a filter medium that helps to cleanse the water by filtering the pollutants and absorbing the nutrients.

Rainwater from the sedimentation pond in Jurong Eco Garden is channelled to the cleansing biotope, the substrates will filter the smaller particles while breaking down pathogens in the rainwater (as stated in the photograph on the right which was taken by our science teacher) 

Jurong Eco Garden uses plants such as Paper Reeds (Cyperus papyru) and Purple Showers (Ruellia brittoniana) to filter the water. This technique of separation fits the theme of 'eco-friendly' because the most visible part of this filtering device would be the plants  (as seen in the second picture), the beautiful plants that were selected would blend in perfectly to the green, eco-friendly park while also being able to filter water at the same time. 

Jurong Lake Park

We could make Jurong Lake Park more eco-friendly and improve the water qualitiy in the lake at the same time by adopting the same separation techniques as Jurong Eco-Garden. We will be able to kill two birds with one stone by doing so, the park would be much more greener as the water the plants filter will provide them with abundant nutrients for them to blossom beautifully while also filtering out the pollutants that would otherwise harm the life of the organisms living in the lake and possibly other animals living close to the lake. The water quality in the lake could be monitored by observing how animals in the lake and nearby react to the change, if the fishes in the lake are reacting well to this change it will be proof that this water separation technique is a great method to use. 

Credits

Xin Ru: Write up for part A

Alyssa and Irfa: Write up for part B

Yong Xuan: Write up for part C

The definition of water quality: 

http://floridakeys.noaa.gov/scisummaries/wqfaq.pdf

Effects of water pollution on an ecosystem: 

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/teacher_resources/project_ideas/pollution/

How water quality affects our ecosystem and economy: 

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/water/waterqual.htm

Second photograph for cleansing biotopes:

http://www.asianurbanepicenters.com/?p=3059