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Predicting Phosphate Movement through Soil Columns¹

ABSTRACT

To assess the potential pollution of ground water with P from septic tank drainfields, sorption capacities of various soils were determined over an extended period of time and related to P movement through soil columns using solutions having P concentrations similar to waste waters. The amounts of P sorbed by fine sandy loam (fsl) and silt loam (sil) soil columns before breakthrough curred were approximately equal to the sorption capacities determined from isotherms obtained over a sufficiently long reaction time of about 200 hours. In Merrimac fsl, breakthrough occurred after about 50 pore volumes of waste water had passed through the column while about 100 pore volumes passed through Buxton sil before the breakthrough occurred. Following breakthrough, concentration of P in the effluent continued to increase and approached the influent concentration after several hundred pore volumes of effluent had passed through the columns. The results, thus, suggest that while most deep soils should effectively remove P from waste water, ground water under drainfields installed in soils of low P sorption capacity after prolonged use may contain undesirably large concentrations of P.

Key Words: septic tank drainfields • ground-water pollution • P sorption capacity of soils

¹ Contribution from The Connecticut Agric. Exp. Stn., New Haven, CT 06504.

² Associate Soil Chemist.

Received for publication April 12, 1976.

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