Isolation of wells contaminated by tannery industries using principal component analysis

The groundwater in the upper Kodaganar basin is contaminated due to the discharge of effluents from tannery industries. The water in the wells, whose physico-chemical characteristics are altered due to the influence of the effluents, is statistically analyzed. The physico-chemical variables such as EC, Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, F^?, Cl^?, HCO₃ ^?,CO₃ ^2?, NO₃ ^?, SO₄ ^2?, pH, and Cr_total were used for this study. An attempt was made to identify the contaminated wells based on suitability for drinking, suitability for industrial requirements, and through principal component analysis (PCA). Classification based on suitability helped in identifying the contaminated wells. However, this resulted in failure when identifying the wells that are contaminated by tanneries. PCA has proved to be effective in the segregation of contaminated wells influenced by tannery industries. The physico-chemical variables that are 13 in number are transformed into two orthogonal components and Eigen values based on the variance. The Eigen values are used to select the first two principal components PC1 (7.26) and PC2 (2.24) that accounted for 73.04% variance in the data. The components of the variables and the wells are plotted in a biplot to isolate the contaminated samples. The contaminated samples are analyzed in the spatial domain in geographic information system and found to be clustered around the tannery belt. The study reveals that 35% of the samples are contaminated due to discharge from tannery industries.