Cadmium mobilisation under conditions simulating anaerobic to aerobic transition in a landfill leachate-polluted aquifer

The anaerobic conditions in landfill leachate-polluted aquifers can lead to trapping of many heavy metals as sulfide precipitates. In laboratory experiments with aqueous systems containing sulfidic solid phases (aquifer solids from a landfill leachate plume or amorphous FeS), cadmium previously trapped as a sulfide precipitate was released to the aqueous phase when conditions were changed from initially slightly anaerobic to aerobic. Cadmium was subsequently removed from solution either by adsorption on Fe oxyhydroxide phases or by precipitation as a carbonate mineral, groundwater pH being the major controlling variable.