This technology is a groundwater treatment and contamination prevention system that draws contaminated groundwater into a hollow extraction well installed vertically underground, purifies it using a replaceable filter unit, and discharges the treated water through a spaced-apart injection well to form a hydraulic barrier between the two wells. Auxiliary wells aligned with the extraction well are also filled with auxiliary filter units to extend the purification zone.
Permeable reactive barriers containing reactive media have been used for groundwater remediation, but because they require large-scale excavation, they suffer from low efficiency, difficulty in replacing media when contaminants change, and high costs. Furthermore, these barriers can cause groundwater to bypass the system or reduce permeability, and a single barrier is often limited in its ability to treat multiple types of contaminants simultaneously.
This technology features a first auxiliary well downstream equipped with extraction capabilities and a reactive filter similar to the extraction well, and a second non-extraction auxiliary well with a different reactive filter placed in between to filter out different contaminants in stages. The filter unit can be configured with first and second reactive material filters arranged vertically, and the well array can be placed perpendicular or at an angle to the groundwater flow to create linear or parabolic barriers. A water treatment monitoring unit compares the contamination levels of influent and effluent. Applicable to industrial site restoration, groundwater protection around landfills and oil storage facilities, and securing water in rural areas, it allows for responding to changes in contamination by simply replacing filters within the wells without excavation, effectively blocking the downstream spread of contaminant plumes.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Environment for the development of reactive media for controlling the spread of inorganic contaminants and the development of construction/control technologies for contamination prevention facilities.
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