Role of Sorption Characteristics of Geomaterials on Long Term Performance of Landfill Barrier
K. M. Nithya1, D. N. Arnepalli2, S. R. Gandhi3
1K.M.Nithya, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.
2Dr. D.N. Arnepalli, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.
3Prof.Dr. S.R. Gandhi, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.
Manuscript received on November 01, 2012. | Revised Manuscript received on November 02, 2012. | Manuscript published on November 05, 2012. | PP: 77-86 | Volume-2 Issue-5, November 2012. | Retrieval Number: E1011102512/2012©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Among the methodologies adopted for safe disposal of various hazardous municipal and industrial solid wastes into environment, the land-filling is considered to be most safe and cost-effective method. For this purpose, compacted clay liners, CCL’s, made up of different geomaterials are popularly used as a barrier to contain the waste and to isolate it from the surrounding environment. The efficiency of the engineered landfills in minimizing the contamination of ground water aquifers highly depends on the hydraulic conductivity, sorption capacity and chemical compatibility of the liner materials. In general, the hydraulic conductivity of the liner material is considered while selecting material and designing the engineered landfill liner system, however, sorption characteristics of the geomaterials play a predominant role in mitigating the transport of the contaminants through the liner system and determine its long term performance. In view of the above facts, three different locally available geomaterials have been selected to evaluate their suitability as liner material based on the physical, chemical and hydraulic characteristics. The sorption characteristics of these geomaterials were established by conducting batch sorption experiments, for different heavy metal contaminants and suitable isotherm has been identified to represent the geomaterial-contaminant interaction. Further, the study illustrated its potential application for obtaining the design thickness of landfill liner based on the sorption characteristics of the geomaterial by using the simple numerical tool, POLLUTE.
Keywords: Landfill barrier, heavy metal, geomaterial, sorption isotherms, distribution coefficient.