Use of a Low-Cost Substrate in a Continuous Recirculation Process to Stimulate Plumewide Anaerobic Dechlorination of Chlorinated Solvents

Over the past 20 years, significant time and money have been spent on better understanding and successfully applying bioremediation in the field. The results of these efforts provide a deeper un-derstanding of aerobic and anaerobic microbial processes, the microbial species and environ-mental conditions that are desirable for specific degradation pathways, and the limitations that may prevent full-scale bioremediation from being successfully applied in heterogeneous subsur-face environments. Numerous substrates have been identified as effective electron donors to stimulate anaerobic dechlorination of chlorinated ethenes, but methods of delivering these sub-strates for in situ bioremediation (direct-push injections, slug injections, high-pressure injections, fracture wells, etc.) have yet to overcome the main limitation of achieving contact between these substrates and the contaminants. Therefore, although it is important (from a full-scale remedia-tion standpoint) to select an appropriate, low-cost substrate that can be supplied in sufficient quantity to promote remediation of a large source area and its associated plume, it is equally im-portant to ensure that the substrate can be delivered throughout the impacted plume zone. Failure to achieve substrate delivery and contact within the chlorinated solvent plume usually re-sults in wasted money and limited remediation benefit. Bioremediation is a contact technology that cannot be effectively implemented on a large scale unless a method for rapidly delivering the low-cost substrate across the entire source and plume areas is utilized. Unfortunately, many cur-rent substrate delivery methods are not achieving sitewide distribution or treatment of the sorbed contaminant mass that exists in the organic fraction of a soil matrix. The following discussion sum-marizes substrate delivery using an aggressive groundwater recirculation approach that can achieve plumewide contact between the contaminants and substrate, thus accelerating dechlori-nation rates and shortening the overall remediation time frame. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.