When dealing with contaminated sites, one of the main problems to be faced
is the treatment of groundwater. In fact, in order to contain the contamination and to
remediate the site, a common managing and operational option is to extract the
groundwater and treat it at the surface prior to discharge. This remedial strategy is
referred to as conventional pump-and-treat technology and its purpose is to remove or
reduce contaminants concentrations so that, after the discharge of the treated water, the
receiving waters meet the relevant quality objectives and provisions required by local or
national regulations, directives or standards. Towards this aim, in the present research
work, a matrix based approach has been adopted for modelling a treatment process for
contaminated groundwater. In particular, it has been considered a modified Broadbent
and Callcott breakage-matrix whose elements have been replaced by first-order kinetic
equations that represent the depletion rate of contaminants’ concentrations. The adopted
approach allows determining the proper recirculation ratio in a groundwater treatment
process for achieving the water quality objectives for discharge. Field tests have been
conducted for the setting up of the mathematical model to be used for the revamping of
an evaporating tower. The results of chemical analyses carried out on groundwater
samples, collected in the input and the output flows of the evaporative tower, confirmed
the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Keywords: Contaminated sites, Groundwater treatment, Breakage-matrix.
