Abstract
Leakage of wastewater from sewer lines may result in contamination of soil and groundwater. Our investigation dealt with the effects of surfactant as one of the constituents of wastewater on the infiltration process of wastewater through soil. To that aim, in a laboratory experiment, a column was uniformly packed with glass beads of 0.25–0.50 mm diameter and equipped with sensors to measure local fluid pressure at three observation points along the direction of flow. The artificial laboratory wastewater was created by adding a commercially available detergent to degassed tap water producing surfactant concentrations between 8 and 16 mg l−1. The displacement process of degassed tap water by such a particle-free artificial wastewater was studied by loading the surfactant solution into the saturated glass beads column. Short-term pressure changes were observed while the interface between water and surfactant solution passed the observation points within the column. The pressure peaks increased for higher surfactant concentrations. The theory of growing interface between surfactant solution and clean water by aggregation of monomers to a double layer could be supported by the column experiments.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abu-Zreig M, Rudra R, Dickinson W (2003) Effect of application of surfactants on hydraulic properties of soils. Biosyst Eng 84(3):363–372
Adak A, Bandyopadhyay M, Pal A (2005) Removal of anionic surfactant from wastewater by alumina: a case study. Colloids Surf A: Physicochem Eng Asp 254(1):165–171
Birdi KS (2002) Self-assembly monolayer structures of lipids and macromolecules at interfaces. Kluwer Academic, New York
Drelich J, Fang Ch, White CL (2002) Measurement of interfacial tension in fluid-fluid systems. In: Hubbard AT (ed) Encyclopedia of surface and colloid science, vol 1. Marcel Dekker, Inc., Michigan Technological University, Houghton, pp 3158–3163
Ellis JB, Revitt DM, Vollertsen J, Blackwood DJ (2009) Sewer exfiltration and the colmation layer. Water Sci Technol 59(11):2273–2280
Ellis J, Revitt D, Karpf C, Krebs P (2010) The exfiltration process and the colmation layer. Assessing infiltration and exfiltration on the performance of urban sewer systems (APUSS), pp 61–70
Field J, Leenheer J, Thorn K, Barber L II, Rostad C, Macalady D, Daniel S (1992) Identification of persistent anionic surfactant-derived chemicals in sewage effluent and groundwater. J Contam Hydrol 9(1):55–78
Fischer P, Windhab EJ, Megias-Alguacil D (2006) Determination of the interfacial tension of low density difference liquid–liquid systems containing surfactants by droplet deformation methods. Chem Eng Sci 5:1386–1394
Gibbs JW (1948) The collected works of J. Willard Gibbs, 1st edn. Yale University Press, New Haven
Gray W, Schrefler B (2001) Thermodynamic approach to effective stress in partially saturated porous media. Eur J Mech-A Solids 20(4):521–538
Held R, Celia M (2001) Modeling support of functional relationships between capillary pressure, saturation, interfacial area and common lines. Adv Water Resour 24(3):325–343
Henau HD, Mathijs E, Hopping W (1986) Linear alkylbenzene sulfonates (LAS) in sewage sludges, soils and sediments: analytical determination and environmental safety considerations. Int J Environ Anal Chem 26(3–4):279–293
Hu Y (2008) Determination of interfacial tension between two immiscible polymers with and without surfactants at the interface. J Colloid Interface Sci 319(1):287–294
Joekar-Niasar V, Hassanizadeh SM (2011) Specific interfacial area: the missing state variable in two-phase flow equations? Water Resour Res 47(5). doi:10.1029/2010WR009291
Joekar-Niasar V, Hassanizadeh S, Dahle H (2010) Non-equilibrium effects in capillarity and interfacial area in two-phase flow: dynamic pore-network modelling. J Fluid Mech 655:38–71
Karpf C, Hoeft S, Scheffer C, Fuchs L, Krebs P (2011) Groundwater infiltration, surface water inflow and sewerage exfiltration considering hydrodynamic conditions in sewer systems. Water Sci Technol 63(9):1841–1848
Macleod C, Radke C (1993) A growing drop technique for measuring dynamic interfacial tension. J Colloid Interface Sci 160(2):435–448
Myers D (2006) Surfactant science and technology, 3rd edn. Wiley-Interscience, New Jersey
Reeves PC, Celia MA (1996) A functional relationship between capillary pressure, saturation, and interfacial area as revealed by a pore-scale network model. Water Resour Res 32(8):2345–2358
Rutsch M, Rieckermann J, Cullmann J, Ellis J, Vollertsen J, Krebs P (2008) Towards a better understanding of sewer exfiltration. Water Res 42(10):2385–2394
Schwarzenbach R, Escher B, Fenner K, Hofstetter T, Johnson C, Von Gunten U, Wehrli B (2006) The challenge of micropollutants in aquatic systems. Science 313(5790):1072–1077
Shafran A, Gross A, Ronen Z, Weisbrod N, Adar E (2005) Effects of surfactants originating from reuse of greywater on capillary rise in the soil. Water Sci Technol 52(10):57–166
Starov V (2004) Surfactant solutions and porous substrates: spreading and imbibition. Adv Colloid Interface Sci 111(1):3–27
Travis M, Wiel-Shafran A, Weisbrod N, Adar E, Gross A (2010) Greywater reuse for irrigation: effect on soil properties. Sci Total Environ 408(12):2501–2508
Wang Z, Wu Q, Wu L, Ritsema C, Dekker L, Feyen J (2000) Effects of soil water repellency on infiltration rate and flow instability. J Hydrol 231:265–276
Wolf L, Eiswirth M, Hoetzl H (2006) Assessing sewer–groundwater interaction at the city scale based on individual sewer defects and marker species distributions. Environ Geol 49(6):849–857
Zhmud B, Tiberg F (2005) Interfacial dynamics and structure of surfactant layers. Adv Colloid Interface Sci 113(1):21–42
Zloto T, Ptak P, Prauzner T (2012) Analysis of signals from inductive sensors by means of the DasyLab software. Annal UMCS Inform 12(1):31–37
Acknowledgments
The work was kindly supported by Helmholtz Interdisciplinary Graduate School for Environmental Research (HIGRADE).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nikpay, M., Lazik, D. & Krebs, P. Water displacement by surfactant solution: an experimental study to represent wastewater loss from sewers to saturated soil. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 12, 2447–2454 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-014-0681-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-014-0681-1