Abstract
Abstract Groundwater-monitoring network is a set of boreholes (wells) that is used to monitor the water table fluctuation and to detect groundwater contamination. In this research, the maximal covering location problem (MCLP) method is employed to discretize the area, and the LINGO modeling program is used to optimize the number of boreholes. Tabriz oil refinery at the northwest of Iran with high pollution potential that imposes a serious threat to the beneath multilayered aquifer was chosen to evaluate the feasibility of these techniques in field scale. The location and content of storage tanks, leakage history, groundwater flow direction, contaminated well location and the facilities leakage potential are considered as the weighting factors to calculate the number and location of the optimal wells. As a result of optimization, the initial estimated number of boreholes by the MCLP model for the study area is reduced from 349 to 184. A high density of optimal boreholes is allocated to refining zone and oil storing yard, especially near tanks containing dangerous substances due to their toxicity and potential for contaminating water. A vulnerability zoning map prepared using the analytical hierarchy process method indicates a suitable conformation between locations of the boreholes and the vulnerable areas.
Highlights
Groundwater contamination by petroleum hydrocarbons is known as the most important problem that imposes threats to groundwater resources and humans (Al-Raoush et al ). This problem is more serious in refineries or industrial petroleum areas, which causes the release of hydrocarbon contamination to underlying aquifers
The Tabriz Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Complex (TRPC) is located in the northwest of Iran, in the East Azerbaijan province, and adjacent to the Tabriz city (Figure 1)
This study introduced a multicriteria analysis to design and optimize the groundwater-monitoring network using maximal covering location problem (MCLP) and LINGO modeling programs in the case of a petroleum industrial area with various potential sources of pollution
Summary
Groundwater contamination by petroleum hydrocarbons is known as the most important problem that imposes threats to groundwater resources and humans (Al-Raoush et al ). This problem is more serious in refineries or industrial petroleum areas, which causes the release of hydrocarbon contamination to underlying aquifers. Effective and efficient management of groundwater requires sufficient coverage of groundwater in both quantitative and qualitative aspects (Ayvaz & Elçi ) This goal can be achieved by establishing a groundwatermonitoring network that is designed to measure changes in groundwater quality or the groundwater level over time which plays an important role in aquifer restoration and prevention. Monitoring wells suspected to be polluted are of interest, and it is necessary to detect the pollutants as soon as possible
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