Journals Proceedings

Abstract

The contamination of groundwater has been a major challenge faced by environmentalists in the recent past. Organic contaminants can enter the groundwater environment from a variety of sources that include toxic waste disposal sites, accidental chemical spills and improperly designed or maintained chemical transportation and storage facilities. Groundwater contamination by the organic chemicals is of immense concern because of their widespread use and harmful effect even when present at very low concentrations. Though organic compounds are usually less soluble in groundwater than many inorganic contaminants of interest, they often dissolve to concentration values that far exceed levels considered acceptable for human consumption. Remediation efforts are normally resorted to at contaminated sites to contain the contaminant plume, to eliminate and finally to extract the contaminants during the restoration work. A Finite difference model is also developed to simulate the process of in-situ bioremediation using Alternate- Direction Implicit technique. This model (BIOFDM) yields the spatial and temporal distribution of contaminant concentration for predefined initial and boundary conditions. The simulated model is later validated by comparing the simulated results with those obtained using BIOPLUME III model of the case study of Shieh and Peralta (2005). The results are found to be in close agreement.