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ASSESSMENT OF INTRINSIC BIOREMEDIATION OF A COAL-TAR AFFECTED AQUIFER USING TWO-DIMENSIONAL REACTIVE TRANSPORT AND BIOGEOCHEMICAL MASS BALANCE APPROACHES
Citation:
ROGERS, S. W., S. K. ONG, G. A. STENBACK, J. GOLCHIN, AND B. H. KJARTANSON. ASSESSMENT OF INTRINSIC BIOREMEDIATION OF A COAL-TAR AFFECTED AQUIFER USING TWO-DIMENSIONAL REACTIVE TRANSPORT AND BIOGEOCHEMICAL MASS BALANCE APPROACHES. M.K. Stenstrom, S.G. Pavlosthathis, R.Y. Surampalli (ed.), WATER ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH. Water Environment Federation, Alexandria, VA, 79(1):13-28, (2007).
Impact/Purpose:
To report the use of direct-push technology (DPT) for expedited site characterization, which allowed rapid characterization of the site hydrogeology, contaminant plume extents, and biogeochemistry for a hydrogeologically complex FMGP site in northwestern Iowa. To show how this combined approach can be used to acquire preliminary estimates of mass degradation rates at FMGP sites using limited (short-term), but spatially resolute, data sets from expedited site characterization.
Description:
Expedited site characterization and groundwater monitoring using direct-push technology and conventional monitoring wells were conducted at a former manufactured gas plant site. Biogeochemical data and heterotrophic plate counts support the presence of microbially mediated remediation. By superimposing solutions of a two-dimensional reactive transport analytical model, first-order degradation rate coefficients (day-1) of various compounds for the dissolved-phase plume were estimated (i.e., benzene [0.0084], naphthalene [0.0058], and acenaphthene [0.0011]). The total mass transformed by aerobic respiration, nitrate reduction, and sulfate-reduction around the free-phase coal-tar dense-nonaqueous-phase-liquid region and in the plume was estimated to be approximately 4.5 kg/y using a biogeochemical mass-balance approach. The total mass transformed using the degradation rate coefficients was estimated to be approximately 3.6 kg/y. Results showed that a simple two-dimensional analytical model and a biochemical mass balance with geochemical data from expedited site characterization can be useful for rapid estimation of mass-transformation rates.
