Two-phase model for transport and biodegradation in a saturated porous media

Actually, the importance of microbial activity in degrading organic substances in both subsurface and deep groundwater has been widely recognized by many authors. Several models have been developed that couple unstructured microbial growth kinetics with the transport of bioactive components in groundwater systems. These models can be broadly grouped into two categories: Those that include mass transfer limitations between the fluid phase and the microbes (multiple-phase models), and those that assume that the mass transfer limitation between the biomass and the aqueous phase can be neglected (single-phase models). The purpose of this presentation is to describe a two-phase model for transport and biodegradation in a saturated porous media (column of the soil), and to examine when the use of single-phase models is appropriate. A new second order total variation diminishing (TVD) scheme, derived from Takacs's scheme is used to treat advection terms whereas biodegradation equations are treated as a system of ordinary differential equations. Numerical results for biorestoration using Monod kinetics are presented.