Effect of Different Doses of Distillery Spentwash on Leaching Using Column Study

Soil column experiment was conducted in the laboratory to find out the effect of spentwash application on leaching of salts to assess the downward movement of spentwash on groundwater quality. The treatment comprised of different doses of spentwash at the rate of 0, 25, 50 and 100 m³ ha^-1. The treatments were applied uniformly and mixed thoroughly in the top 10 cm of the column. The soil was left for incubation for 15 days and thereafter leaching with distilled water, the leachate samples were analyzed for various parameters like pH, EC, cations and anions at periodical intervals. The results revealed that increasing dose of spentwash application increased the pH and reduction in the EC of the leachates over the period of leaching events. Among the cations, K⁺, Na⁺, Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ were higher in the leachates upto 4^th leaching events and thereby decreased, similar trend of results were noticed in the anions. The soil collected after 8^th leaching event contained appreciable amounts of all the ions. The results reveled that there is no possibility of groundwater contamination with spentwash application in the sandy loam soil.