Abstract
A Trichloroethylene(TCE)-degrading bacterium, Methylocystis sp. strain M, isolated from soil has a high TCE degradable activity. When we apply strain M for bioaugmentation, we have to know the behavior of this strain in the contaminant area. We investigated the movement of strain M in glass beads, sandy soil, andosol, and Kanuma soil using a soil-aquifer column. Strain M moved a little slower than NaCl through glass beads, sandy soil, and andosol. This indicated that the movement of strain M was not influenced by adsorption to such soils. In the case of Kanuma soil, strain M moved faster than NaCi. It seemed that the phenomenon was caused by the characteristic structure of Kanuma soil which results in a short-cut route for strain M. The breakthrough curves derivde from the column experiments well fitted the one-dimensional transportation model, which reflected the advection, dispersion, and sorption. We can predict the movement of bacteria in groundwater using the transportation models.
