Development of a Low-Cost Portable Resistivimeter for Application in Sanitary Landfills

This work presents the development of a low-cost, automated resistivimeter prototype, designed for sanitary landfills’ geotechnical and environmental monitoring. The proposed system is based on the Vertical Electrical Sounding technique (VES), using the Wenner array to measure the electrical resistivity of the soil. The system was built using an ESP32 microcontroller, enabling real-time acquisition of current and voltage data and immediate result visualization through an LCD display. Initial bench tests indicated good agreement between the theoretical and experimental resistivity values. In the future, the prototype will be encapsulated and tested in real landfill field conditions to assess its robustness and power supply stability, and to compare its performance with commercial equipment in terms of accuracy and cost.