Assessment of Tube Well Pumping Test Performance on Different Geological Formation

Abstract

Water supply-demand is increasing in line with the increment in population. Natural water resources are declining due to reduction of water catchment areas, river pollution and drought. This causes the raw water quantity and quality to decrease and increase water treatment costs. Groundwater usage may be able to solve this problem due to its less polluted nature which requires less treatment. The groundwater is preserved in aquifer within the geological formations, i.e., in the alluvium and fractured-rock. However, the groundwater yield of each formation is unknown unless tube well is constructed and pumping test are performed. This study aim to evaluate the tube well performance via pumping test on two different geological formations. This research focuses on the effect of transmissivity, hydraulic conductivity, and efficiency of the aquifer, which are step-drawdown test, constant-rate test and recovery test in tube well in geological formation of alluvium and fractured rock. Three well-pumping tests at each formation were conducted at IBS Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK), Kelantan, Sekolah Kebangsaan Chantum, Kelantan, Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Agama Tok Bachok, Kelantan, FRU Wakaf Tapai, Terengganu, Kampung Dada Kering, Kuala Lipis, Pahang, and Kampung Seri Gunung Pulai, Johor, respectively. The aquifer efficiency obtained from the relationship between transmissivity and hydraulic conductivity. The suggested value of 75% efficiency is selected to present the well’s efficiency. The wells efficiency indicate that the alluvium formation has roughly uniform output between 9.39m3/h, 11.23m3/h and 23.38m3/h. Meanwhile in the fractured rock formation the efficiency was highly varied between sites, the highest is 32.33m3/h and the other two sites obtained has low output of 3.44 m3/h and 1.00m3/h respectively. The alluvium aquifer showed uniform water production compared to fractured hard rock aquifer. Meanwhile the water quantity in the fractured hard rock formation is unpredicted, which subjected to the fractured rock characteristic.