International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—Assessment of pollution potential of soil and groundwater by MSW landfill leachate in an industrial city of the eastern India has been carried out through physico-chemical characterization of soil and groundwater, identification of priority contaminants, batch adsorption and isotherm studies of priority contaminants. The study region used to receive wastes for 8-10 years in an area of 1000m × 500m before it was abandoned 3 years ago. Cr⁶⁺ has been taken as priority contaminant in the leachate because of its presence in the MSW dump site soil as seven times higher (10.16 mg/Kg) than the CCME standard. Hydrogeologically the dump area underlies potential unconfined aquifer with easterly flow direction of the groundwater. Depth of water table (0.91-5.92 m) suggests a thin zone of aeration which increases the possibility of the contaminant to reach groundwater. Batch equilibrium study revealed that the intermediate soil zone possess good resilience with respect to Cr⁶⁺ transport in the subsurface. Freundlich isotherm model provided the best fit (R²=0.9837, RMSE=0.89) to Cr⁶⁺ batch adsorption results. Multiple binding of Cr⁶⁺ was facilitated by the presence of higher concentration iron in the in-situ soil.

Index Terms—Adsorption, chromium, groundwater, in-situ soil, isotherm, MSW dumpsite.

Kalyan Adhikari is with the Department of Earth and Environmental Studies, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, West Bengal, India (e-mail: k_adh@yahoo.co.in).
Supriya Pal is with the Civil Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, West Bengal, India (e-mail: supriya.pal@ce.nitdgp.ac.in).

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Cite: Kalyan Adhikari and Supriya Pal, "Assessment of Pollution Potential of Soil and Groundwater in a Non-Engineered MSW Landfill Site," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 207-210, 2016.