Author: Robert C. Starr

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 49

ISBN-13:

Trichloroethene (TCE), a common groundwater contaminant, can be degraded under certain conditions by microorganisms that occur naturally in the subsurface. TCE can be degraded under anaerobic conditions to less chlorinated compounds and ultimately into the non-chlorinated, non-hazardous end product, ethene, via anaerobic reductive dechlorination (ARD). ARD is widely recognized as a TCE degradation mechanism, and occurs in active groundwater remediation and can occur during monitored natural attenuation (MNA). MNA relies on natural processes, such as dispersion and degradation, to reduce contaminant concentrations to acceptable levels without active human intervention other than monitoring. TCE can also be biodegraded under aerobic conditions via cometabolism, in which microbial enzymes produced for other purposes fortuitously also react with TCE. In cometabolism, TCE is oxidized directly to non-hazardous products. Cometabolism as a TCE-degrading process under aerobic conditions is less well known than ARD. Natural attenuation is often discounted as a TCE remedial alternative in aerobic conditions based on the paradigm that TCE is biodegradable only under anaerobic conditions. In contrast to this paradigm, TCE was shown to degrade relative to conservative co-contaminants at an environmentally significant rate in a large (approximately 3 km long) TCE plume in aerobic groundwater at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and the degradation mechanism was shown to be cometabolism. MNA was selected as the remedy for most of this plume, resulting in a considerable cost savings relative to conventional remedial methods. To determine if cometabolism might be a viable remedy at other sites with TCE-contaminated aerobic groundwater, TCE plumes at Department of Energy (DOE) facilities were screened to evaluate whether TCE commonly degrades in aerobic groundwater, and if degradation rates are fast enough that natural attenuation could be a viable remedy. One hundred and twenty seven plumes at 24 DOE facilities were screened, and 14 plumes were selected for detailed examination. In the plumes selected for further study, spatial changes in the concentration of a conservative co-contaminant were used to compensate for the effects of mixing and temporal changes in TCE release from the contaminant source. Decline in TCE concentration along a flow path in excess of the co contaminant concentration decline was attributed to cometabolic degradation. This study indicated that TCE was degraded in 9 of the 14 plumes examined, with first order degradation half-lives ranging from about 1 to 12 years. TCE degradation in about two-thirds of the plumes examined suggests that cometabolism of TCE in aerobic groundwater is a common occurrence, in contrast to the conventional wisdom that TCE is recalcitrant in aerobic groundwater. The degradation half-life values calculated in this study are short enough that natural attenuation may be a viable remedy in many aerobic plumes. Computer modeling of groundwater flow and contaminant transport and degradation is frequently used to predict the evolution of groundwater plumes, and for evaluating natural attenuation and other remedial alternatives. An important aspect of a computer model is the mathematical approach for describing degradation kinetics. A common approach is to assume that degradation occurs as a first-order process. First order kinetics are easily incorporated into transport models and require only a single value (a degradation half-life) to describe reaction kinetics. The use of first order kinetics is justified in many cases because more elaborate kinetic equations often closely approximate first order kinetics under typical field conditions. A previous modeling study successfully simulated the INL TCE plume using first order degradation kinetics. TCE cometabolism is the result of TCE reacting with microbial enzymes that were produced for other purposes, such as oxidizing a growth substrate to obtain energy. Both TCE and the growth substrate compete for enzyme reactive sites, and the presence of one interferes with reactions with the enzyme by the other. It was assumed that a competitive inhibition kinetic expression would be more technically rigorous than a first order decay kinetic model. Two activities were undertaken to evaluate this assumption. First, a collaborator measured the parameters of this kinetic model under conditions similar to those of the INL TCE plume. The results will be used in a transport model to compare transport simulated using these measured values with transport simulated using kinetic parameter values from the literature, which are typically for actively growing microorganisms, in contrast to the steady-state, near starvation conditions in the INL TCE plume. Second, modification of flow and reactive transport simulation software to include a competitive inhibition kinetic model was begun.