Parameter Determination for Reductive Dechlorination of Chlorinated Solvents

Abstract

The contamination of subsurface due to the chlorinated solvents such as tetrachlorethylene (PCE) and trichlorethylene (TCE) is one of the most difficult environmental problems to treat. Bioremediation has been shown by many researchers to be a remedial alternative for this type of contamination. Chlorinated solvents are not directly mineralized but rather are transformed by microorganisms into one or more intermediate compounds before converting into a final compound. These sequential reactions, termed “reductive dehalogenation”, consist of replacing a chlorine atom by a hydrogen atom. The pathway of degradation of PCE can be expressed by the following scheme PCE → TCE → DCE → VC → ETH, where dichloroethene (DCE), vinyl chloride (VC) and finally ETH is ethylene. Since the biotransformation rate coefficients of each intermediate compound are different, they have to be determined very precisely to establish an effective treatment operation. The sequential decay can be described by Michaelis–Menten’s kinetics, which constitutes a highly nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). This is very sensitive to the changes of biotransformation rate coefficients. In this study we introduce a methodology how to numerically estimate the rate coefficients for Michaelis–Menten’s equations from the knowledge of the concentrations of PCE, TCE, DCE, VC and ETH. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated on some examples. Estimated biotransformation coefficients are employed to predict the concentrations of chlorinated solvents. Computations and measurements show a very good agreement.