Modelling heavy metals contamination in groundwater of Southern Punjab, Pakistan
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Modelling heavy metals contamination in groundwater of Southern Punjab, Pakistan A. Ashraf1,2 · X. Chen2 · R. Ramamurthy1 Received: 18 May 2020 / Revised: 24 August 2020 / Accepted: 30 September 2020 © Islamic Azad University (IAU) 2020
Abstract The present study aimed to develop a numerical simulation to predict the chemistry change of groundwater heavy metals pollution (mainly arsenic pollution) in the Southern region of the Punjab Province of Pakistan. This work is the first attempt in modelling the transport of groundwater heavy metals pollution in the area using a 1D reactive transport model. PHREEQC was employed to perform the numerical simulation. The conceptual model represented the 1D numerical transport model with the homogenous mineral composition having uniform transport of the municipal wastewater. A 100 m column—20 cell transport model was used with a time step of 5000 years, making a simulated timescale of 100,000 years. The simulation was carried out using quartz, illite, and calcite kinetics. Arsenic sorption kinetics were also incorporated in the simulation. The results revealed that the concentrations of four out of ten heavy metals and three out of eight inorganic ions were above the drinking water quality standards at the end of the simulation making the groundwater unsafe for drinking purposes. The arsenic concentration was found out to be 3.79 mg/l against 100,000 year which is 379 times the international drinking water standard and about 76 times the national drinking water standard for arsenic. It is concluded that the groundwater, regardless of the natural soil treatment, will be highly contaminated after 100,000 years, particularly with heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead, and nickel. The groundwater quality can be enhanced by appreciating the preventive measures recommended in this study. Keywords Arsenic · Geochemistry · Contamination · Groundwater · Modelling
Introduction Heavy metals groundwater contamination is an emerging issue in Pakistan. The concentration of heavy metals increases in soil due to the discharge of untreated wastewater from agricultural, industrial, and municipal sources. This subsequently leads to heavy metals accumulation in groundwater. Heavy metals concentrations in groundwater Editorial responsibility: Samareh Mirkia. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-020-02965-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * A. Ashraf [email protected] 1
UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Westvest 7, 2611 AX Delft, Netherlands
School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, Woodhouse, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
2
throughout the country often exceed the World Health Organisation (WHO) permissible drinking water limits (Raza et al. 2017; Waseem et al. 2014). The exceeding amount of toxic metals can severely degrade groundwater quality resulting in adverse human health problems (Azizullah et al. 2011). Groundwater a
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