Abstract

Use of compacted silty clay soil collected from the Gangetic river sediment near Kolkata, West Bengal, India has been experimentally explored in the laboratory as a low cost landfill liner material for retarding the migration of phenolic compounds releasing from a coke oven wastewater outfall site in Durgapur, West Bengal, India. The phenol concentration in the wastewater was found in the range of 4.0-12.0 mg/L in different times of a calendar year. Batch adsorption results reveal that the maximum phenol removal efficiency of 95% was achieved at an initial phenol concentration of 4 mg/L for the soil dose of 20 g/L, solution pH of 6.0 and after a reaction time of 24 h. Index properties, swelling potential, compaction characteristics and permeability of the soil indicate that it is low compressible, moderately expansive and low permeable (1.90×10^-8 cm/s) and having reasonably good phenol attenuation capacity (472.5 mg/g). These favorable findings suggest that the compacted clay soil can be potentially utilized as primary landfill liner material for containment of phenolic waste generated from coke oven wastewater.