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).
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.
