Safwan-Zubair area is regarded as one of theimportant agricultural areas in Basrah province, South of Iraq.The aim of this study is to predict groundwater level in this areausing ANNs model. The data required for building the ANNmodel are generated using MODFLOW model (V.5.3).MODFLOW model was calibrated based on field measurementsof groundwater level in13 monitoring wells during a period ofone year (Nov./2013 to Oct/2014). The neural network toolboxavailable in MATLAB version 7.1 (2010B) was used to developthe ANN models. Three layers feed-forward network with Log-sigmoid transfer function was used. The networks were trainedusing Levenberg-Marquardt back-propagation algorithm. TheANN modes are divided into two groups, each of four models.The input data of the first group include hydraulic heads, while,the input data of the second group include hydraulic heads andrecharge rates. Based on results of this study it was found that;the best ANN model for predicting groundwater levels in thestudy area is obtained when the input data includes hydraulicheads and recharge rates of two successive months preceding thetarget month, the best structure of ANN model is of three layersfeed-forward network type composes of two hidden layers, eachof ten nodes, and the including of recharge rates as input data,beside the hydraulic heads has improved slightly the results.

Flocculation process is used to agglomerate colloids to form large and heavy flocs. It is accomplished using mechanical or hydraulic slow mixing. The hydraulic mixing is usually achieved using baffles. The aim of this study is to conduct experimental work to study the effect of baffles shape and configuration on baffled flocculator performance. The work includes 304 experiments conducted in a pilot plant of baffled flocculator. Two arrangements of three baffle shapes (blind baffles, baffles of rectangular slot and baffles of circular slots) were adopted. During each experiment, water turbidity and temperature, influent flow rate and head loss were measured. The main outcomes of this study are; (1) for all baffle types and arrangements, flocculation efficiency (FE) increases with the increase of velocity gradient (G) till it reaches a maximum value, then, it decreases and the G value which produces the maximum FE varies with detention time (t), (2) within the applied range of Gt values (10231-25304), the correlation between FE and Gt is weak to moderate positive and varied according to baffles type and arrangement, (3) within the applied range of initial water turbidity (IWT) values (18.1-196) NTU, the correlation between FE and IWT is weak positive to good positive represented by logarithmic relationship, and (4) within the implemented baffle types, the blind baffles type gives the highest FE values for all the baffles number as compared with the other baffle types. Also, the most frequent head loss coefficient values were obtained.

Fluidized bed reactor (FBR) is an attached growththe system used mainly for biological treatment of industrialwastewater of high organic content. These wastewaters areusually resulted from refineries and milk, starch, and olive oilindustries. The objective of this study is to investigate the use offluidized bed reactor for treating sanitary sewage. The study wasaccomplished using a pilot plant of the FBR. The pilot plant wasconstructed and installed in Hamdan Sewage Treatment Plant inBasrah governorate. That was to maintain continuous source ofsettled sewage which is the influent to the FBR. The period ofplant operation was nine weeks. During, this period, the plantwas operated at three phases of different conditions (up the flowvelocity and recirculation ratio). To study the performance ofFBR, the main measured parameters were; BOD, DO, VSS, pH,and temperature. The most important conclusions of this studyare; (1) the maximum efficiency of BOD removal is 78.6% whichwas obtained for hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 24min andupflow velocity of 1.59m/min, (2) the effluent BOD values duringphases-1 and 2 of plant operation match that of stabilizationponds and trickling filters and during phase-3 matches thatactivated sludge process, (3) during all operation phases, thevalues of effluent pH are within the limits specified in nationalstandards of secondary effluents, (4) as F/M increases, theefficiency of BOD removal decreases and the maximumthe efficiency of BOD removal (78.6%) was obtained at F/M ratioequals 23.47 day-1, and (5) the HRT of fluidized bed reactor is onorder of minutes, while, the values of HRT of activated sludgesystems and stabilization ponds are on the order of hours and days,respectively.