Comparison of bioclogging effects in saturated porous media within one- and two-dimensional flow systems

The accumulation of microbial biomass in a porous medium can lead to a reduction of pore space and an associated decrease in the hydraulic conductivity of the medium - an effect called bioclogging. This phenomenon may occur in several natural and engineered subsurface systems and can be relevant in fields ranging from contaminant hydrology to civil and environmental engineering, as well as for enhanced oil recovery. During the last decades bioclogging has been studied in various laboratory and theoretical studies. Most of these studies considered only one-dimensional flow fields inside a porous medium. Although these studies provided valuable information on bioclogging and factors controlling it, recent studies showed that an extrapolation of these results to multi-dimensional flow fields is not straight forward. This paper reviews the experimental results obtained for one- and two-dimensional flow fields and compares the modeling results obtained using different conceptualizations of the pore space. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.