Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation for Bacteria Transport in Soil

A thorough understanding of bacteria transport in soil and groundwater is vital to the successful practice of environmental bioremediation. In this work, a dual-process adsorption with growth and decay model of bacterial transport was proposed. The on-site soil and the high efficiency methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) degrading bacterium Chryseobacterium sp.A-3, was used in the experiments. The model was validated using one-dimensional soil column experiments. The results show that the dual-process adsorption with growth and decay model proposed well describes the migration mechanism of microorganisms in soil and groundwater environment. According to the model analysis and simulation, the bacterial transport is enhanced as flow velocity and inlet cell concentration increase. Compared with the contaminant MTBE, the bacteria show stronger transport capacity but the irreversible straining in soil prevents the bacteria from transporting longer than MTBE. The results have certain instructive significance to the in-situ contamination remediation operation.