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Abstract

Groundwater contamination is the major environmental risk related to landfilling of wastes. In order to evaluate the migration of leachate from uncontrolled dumps and to establish efficient groundwater monitoring systems at sanitary landfills, basic information about the behaviour of pollutants in soil-groundwater systems is needed. A series of saturated laboratory soil columns loaded with acid phase leachate under anaerobic CO₂-saturated conditions were studied in terms of solute breakthrough curves and final pollutant soil profiles. The four soils studied exhibited significantly different capacities for attenuating leachate pollutants. In general, ammonia, sodium and boron were attenuated only by adsorption and organic matter by a combination of adsorption and degradation. Dissolved solids, specific conductivity, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and manganese were, besides adsorption, subject to precipitation-dissolution processes. For iron and manganese the latter process was in combination with redox processes. Zinc and cadmium were extensively attenuated probably due to a combination of adsorption and sulphide precipitation. With a few exceptions, chloride, dissolved solids, specific conductivity, organic matter (COD) and sodium are the most mobile constituents of the leachate exhibiting migration velocities of 80-100% of the water flow velocity,

Keywords

Ground water landfill leachate soil volatile fatty acids COD inorganic ions adsorption precipitation degradation.

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Soil Attenuation of Acid Phase Landfill Leachate

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