Assessment of Efficacy of Silty-Sandy Soil to Treat Carbendazim-Laden Wastewater

Abstract

Pesticides are used in the agricultural field in order to destroy harmful pests and weeds. Nowadays, the excessive use of pesticides also produces a detrimental effect on the ecosystem. Though many European countries have banned its use, some countries like India still allow it. In this study, laboratory-scale batch experiments were conducted with the help of response surface methodology to determine the sorption behavior of a commonly used fungicide Carbendazim on a locally available silty sandy soil of the Durgapur region, West Bengal, having a saturated hydraulic conductivity of 1.66 × 10–5 cm/s. The soil proved to be moderately efficient in removing Carbendazim at the rate of 63.93% for a selective dose of Carbendazim as 12 mg/L within a contact time of 2 h. The Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second-order kinetic model proved to be the best fit with R2 values of 0.99 and 0.98, respectively.