Research Progress on Groundwater Contaminants Source Tracking in Chemical Industrial Parks Using Fingerprinting Technology

Groundwater is a vital component of global water resources. With the advancement of industrialization and urbanization, groundwater pollution has become increasingly severe, particularly around chemical industrial parks, where contaminants often include complex mixtures of inorganic compounds, heavy metals, and organic pollutants. Due to the intrinsic connections between groundwater contaminants and the raw materials, processing techniques, and products of associated enterprises within these parks, fingerprinting-based source tracking technologies are essential for clarifying pollution liability and guiding effective remediation strategies. This paper provides a comprehensive reviews in instrumentation, fingerprinting techniques, and source apportionment methodologies for groundwater contamination tracing in chemical industrial parks. It highlights the application of isotopic analysis, spectroscopic techniques, and chromatography-mass spectrometry in the development of fingerprint database and source identification. The echnical strengths, limitations, operational contexts, and future development directions of these approaches are critically assessed. In the future, the efforts should be made to enrich multi-level characteristic fingerprint databases including park-wide signatures, sector-specific profiles, facility-level fingerprints, and process-unit identifiers, while also advancing integrated low-cost in-situ monitoring technologies and AI-driven intelligent tracing systems. These innovations will support real-time contamination tracking, precise source identification, and informed decision-making for pollution management across operational scales, from individual production units to entire industrial complexes.