Identification of clandestine groundwater pollution source locations and their release flux history

Abstract

Abstract Large numbers of untreated toxic wastes are often buried underground, as a method of disposal. Such methods of clandestine disposal have led to widespread pollution of groundwater resources. These methods of wastes disposal are often adopted to avoid the cost incurred in proper treatment of the waste and untraceability of such clandestine disposals. However, the effect of such disposals manifests in form of groundwater pollution, which if left unchecked would potentially pollute the entire aquifer. Such polluted aquifers need to be reclaimed by implementing proper remediation techniques. However, the effectiveness of any remediation technique would depend on the precise knowledge of the unknown pollutant source/s characteristics, in terms of their Numbers, their Locations and their Release Flux history referred to as NLRF. This study presents a noble technique for simultaneously estimating the unknown number of clandestine pollutant sources, their locations along with their release flux history. Simulated Annealing (SA) is used in Linked Simulation Optimization (LSO) based framework. In this developed methodology, the number of sources and their respective locations and release flux histories are treated as unknown decision variables, and are estimated simultaneously along with the source release flux history.