Transport of Pathogen Surrogates in Soil Treatment Units: Numerical Modeling

Water

Ivan Morales¹  Janet A. Atoyan²  José A. Amador² 

[1] Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881, USA; E-Mail:;Laboratory of Soil Ecology and Microbiology, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881, USA; E-Mails:

关键词: onsite wastewater treatment system;    E. coli;    MS-2 phage;    transport parameters;    modeling;    HYDRUS 2D/3D;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w6040818

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Segmented mesocosms (n = 3) packed with sand, sandy loam or clay loam soil were used to determine the effect of soil texture and depth on transport of two septic tank effluent (STE)-borne microbial pathogen surrogates—green fluorescent protein-labeled E. coli (GFPE) and MS-2 coliphage—in soil treatment units. HYDRUS 2D/3D software was used to model the transport of these microbes from the infiltrative surface. Mesocosms were spiked with GFPE and MS-2 coliphage at 10⁵ cfu/mL STE and 10⁵–10⁶ pfu/mL STE, respectively. In all soils, removal rates were >99.99% at 25 cm. The transport simulation compared (1) optimization; and (2) trial-and-error modeling approaches. Only slight differences between the transport parameters were observed between these approaches. Treating both the die-off rates and attachment/detachment rates as variables resulted in an overall better model fit, particularly for the tailing phase of the experiments. Independent of the fitting procedure, attachment rates computed by the model were higher in sandy and sandy loam soils than clay, which was attributed to unsaturated flow conditions at lower water content in the coarser-textured soils. Early breakthrough of the bacteria and virus indicated the presence of preferential flow in the system in the structured clay loam soil, resulting in faster movement of water and microbes through the soil relative to a conservative tracer (bromide).

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.