Assessment of Wastewater Contaminants Retention for a Soil-aquifer Treatment System Using Soil-column Experiments

Soil-Aquifer Treatment systems are increasingly seen as a relatively inexpensive and complementary water quality enhancement process, which may be particularly relevant in water scarcity scenarios. In this context, a set of soil-column experiments were conducted aiming to replicate the conditions of infiltration basins using soil as a depuration media for wastewater quality increment previous to managed aquifer recharge. The results showed a decrease in a set of contaminants analysed, when comparing to the inflow concentrations, showing that retention and degradation are occurring inside the experimented soil. Ultimately a set of conclusions were achieved that allowed to define the composition of a reactive layer to be installed in real scale infiltration basins that will act as a complementary wastewater treatment method.