The Use of Electrical Resistivity Method to Mapping The Migration of Heavy Metals by Electrokinetic

The presence of heavy metals contamination in soil environment highly needs innovative remediation. Basically, this contamination was resulted from ex-mining sites, motor workshop, petrol station, landfill and industrial sites. Therefore, soil treatment is very important due to metal ions are characterized as non-biodegradable material that may be harmful to ecological system, food chain, human health and groundwater sources. There are various techniques that have been proposed to eliminate the heavy metal contamination from the soil such as bioremediation, phytoremediation, electrokinetic remediation, solidification and stabilization. The selection of treatment needs to fulfill some criteria such as cost-effective, easy to apply, green approach and high remediation efficiency. Electrokinetic remediation technique (EKR) offers those solutions in certain area where other methods are impractical. While, electrical resistivity method offers an alternative geophysical technique for soil subsurface profiling to mapping the heavy metals migration by the influece of electrical gradient. Consequently, this paper presents an overview of the use of EKR to treat contaminated soil by using ERM method to verify their effectiveness to remove heavy metals. (paper)