Background

Groundwater is the main source of drinking water in Europe and its contamination by polluted soils or as a result of landfill leaching can pose a major threat to the environment and human health. The Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) and the Groundwater Directive (80/68/EEC) stipulate improvements in water and groundwater quality by the year 2015. Recently, the in-situ treatment of aquifers has become increasingly interesting as the relevant technology develops, becomes more reliable and gains greater acceptance.
Objectives

The objective of the project is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a multifunctional permeable barrier named ‘MULTIBARRIER’, which combines different principles of barrier technology, namely the removal of pollutants based on both physico-chemical and biological activities in order to treat plumes with mixed pollutants.
The projects aims to prove that the technology is an alternative to landfill leachate treatment and can offer more economical means of preventing the risk of groundwater contamination than landfill remediation or re-installation. MULTIBARRIER technology will be applied at field scale in Belgium and Austria – two regions of Europe with completely different hydro-geological characteristics, solid-waste composition and operating conditions.