AccScience Publishing / AJWEP / Volume 18 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.3233/AJW210016
RESEARCH ARTICLE

The Status of Surface Water in West Tripura District,  India: An Approach by Using Water Quality Index and  Multivariate Statistical Technique

Biplab Roy1 Ajay Kumar Manna1*
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1 Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Agartala, Agartala - 799046, India
AJWEP 2021, 18(2), 27–36; https://doi.org/10.3233/AJW210016
Submitted: 30 January 2021 | Accepted: 30 January 2021 | Published: 29 April 2021
© 2021 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

The present investigation provides a better interpretation of surface water (rivers, ponds, bills, lakes, etc.)  quality utilising entropy weighted water quality index (EWWQI) and different multivariate statistical techniques.  Eleven physicochemical parameters including alkalinity, dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, total dissolved solids (TDS),  electrical conductivity (EC), calcium (Ca), turbidity, magnesium (Mg), total hardness (TH), chloride (Cl- ), and iron  (Fe) were analysed and monitored at 23 sampling sites (in December 2018) of West Tripura district. Experimental  outcomes of turbidity followed by Fe contamination exceeded recommended WHO standard limit. The maximum  values of Fe and turbidity were estimated as 8.745 mg/L and 797.7 NTU, respectively. WQI values confirmed  that most of the monitoring locations had poor water quality except three reported areas (S7, S14, and S15) but  without Fe and turbidity, estimated WQI confirmed drinkable water condition for entire samples. Multivariate  statistical approaches like correlation analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) were  applied to explore water quality. PCA outcomes recognised three principal factors explaining almost 85% of the  total variance. CA investigated three major clusters of 23 sampling sites namely less polluted, highly polluted and  moderately polluted zone. Confirming all above, the surface water at the monitoring locations is a major concern  which may lead to serious health issues in local people.

Keywords
Water quality index
Pearson’s correlation coefficient
principal component analysis
cluster analysis.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Electronic ISSN: 1875-8568 Print ISSN: 0972-9860, Published by AccScience Publishing