A review on groundwater contaminant transport and remediation

This paper reviews for the occurrence of groundwater contaminants including natural and manmade. Contaminants found in groundwater cover a broad range of physical, inorganic, and organic chemicals and radioactive parameters. The increasing trends of industrial effluents including municipal sewage are the main sources for contaminants in groundwater. In order to assess the level of groundwater contamination, appropriate mathematical model can be used and accordingly plans can be developed to combat the menace. Present study discusses the sources of contaminants, their movement, mathematical modeling, and remedial measures to stop further groundwater contamination in India and Australia. It is shown that in general, mobile immobile model gives better fit of observed data as compared to convection dispersion model. There is also a need to establish low-cost remediation methods to enable more reliable remediation to solve groundwater contamination problems.