Thermal Pollution

Thermal pollution is the degradation of water quality caused by any process that changes the ambient water temperature. Common sources of thermal pollution include power plants and industrial manufacturers that use water as a coolant and return it to the environment at a higher temperature, decreasing oxygen levels and affecting ecosystems. Urban runoff from roads and parking lots can also thermally pollute waters by increasing temperatures. Abrupt rises in water temperature from changes in plant operations can kill organisms not adapted to the new temperature range through thermal shock.

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Thermal Pollution

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Aman Chadha

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Thermal pollution is the degradation of water quality by any process that changes ambient water temperature.

A common cause of thermal pollution is the use of water as a coolant by power plants and industrial manufacturers. When water used as a coolant is returned to the natural environment at a higher temperature, the change in temperature (a) decreases oxygen supply, and (b) affects ecosystem composition.

Urban runoff--storm water discharged to surface waters from roads and parking lots--can also be a source of elevated water temperatures.

When a power plant first opens or shuts down for repair or other causes, fish and other organisms adapted to particular temperature range can be killed by the abrupt rise in water temperature known as 'thermal shock'.

Thermal pollution from industrial sources is generated mostly by power plants, petroleum refineries, pulp and paper mills, chemical plants, steel mills and smelters. Heated water from these sources may be controlled with:

* Cooling ponds, man-made bodies of water designed for cooling by evaporation, convection, and radiation

* Cooling towers, which transfer waste heat to the atmosphere through evaporation and/or heat transfer

* Cogeneration, a process where waste heat is recycled for domestic and/or industrial heating purposes.

Warm water typically decreases the level of dissolved oxygen in the water. The decrease in levels of dissolved oxygen can harm aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and copepods. This leads to competition for fewer resources; the more adapted organisms moving in may have an advantage over organisms that are not used to the warmer temperature. As a result one has the problem of compromising food chains of the old and new environments. Biodiversity can be decreased as a result. An increased metabolic rate may result in food source shortages, causing a sharp decrease in a population. Changes in the environment may also result in a migration of organisms to another, more suitable environment, and to inmigration of organisms that normally only live in warmer waters elsewhere. Thermal pollution may also increase the metabolic rate of aquatic animals, as enzyme activity, resulting in these organisms consuming more food in a shorter time than if their environment were not changed.

Sudden and peroiodic increase in temperature producing a thermal effect Changed dissolved oxygen distribution of organisms among major and minor communities. Death of steno hermic animals Changes to reproductive powers and increased susceptibility to disease production of heat shock proteins for thermotolerance. changes in migration time and pattern may be affected. Bio indicators are the first to show the effects Decrease in productivity of the water body . Economic and environmental damage

Other than man made sources of aquatic thermal pollution, changes in vegetation cover along the banks of the water body or increase in turbidity has been reported to cause increasing in temperature.