TY - JOUR
T1 - Sequential anaerobic and aerobic bioaugmentation for commingled groundwater contamination of trichloroethene and 1,4-dioxane
AU - Li, Fei
AU - Deng, Daiyong
AU - Zeng, Lingke
AU - Abrams, Stewart
AU - Li, Mengyan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded by National Science Foundation (NSF, CAREER CBET-1846945 ), United States Geological Survey (USGS) State Water Resources Research Act Program ( 2018NJ400B ), Langan Engineering, and the start-up fund from the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science at NJIT USA. Federal funders had no role in study design, data collection, and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/6/20
Y1 - 2021/6/20
N2 - Chlorinated solvents, notably trichloroethene (TCE), and the cyclic ether stabilizer, 1,4-dioxane (dioxane), have been frequently detected commingling in contaminated aquifers. Here we developed a sequential anaerobic and aerobic treatment strategy effective to mitigate the co-contamination of TCE and dioxane, particularly when dioxane is present at ppb levels relevant to many impacted sites. After the primary anaerobic treatment by a halorespiring consortium SDC-9, TCE was effectively removed, though lingering less-chlorinated metabolites, vinyl chloride (VC) and cis-dichloroethene (cDCE). Subsequent aerobic bioaugmentation with Azoarcus sp. DD4, a cometabolic dioxane degrader, demonstrated the ability of DD4 to degrade dioxane at an initial concentration of 20 μg/L to below 0.4 μg/L and its dominance (~7%) in microcosms fed with propane. Even better, DD4 can also transform VC and cDCE in tandem, though cDCE and VC at relatively high concentrations (e.g., 1 mg/L) posed inhibition to propane assimilation and cell growth of DD4. Mutagenesis of DD4 revealed group-2 toluene monooxygenase and group-5 propane monooxygenase are responsible for cDCE and VC co-oxidation, respectively. Overall, we demonstrated the feasibility of a treatment train combining reductive dehalogenation and aerobic co-oxidation processes in tandem to not only effectively clean up prevalent co-contamination of TCE and dioxane at trace levels but also mitigate persistent products (e.g., cDCE and VC) when complete reductive dehalogenation of less-chlorinated ethenes occurs slowly in the field.
AB - Chlorinated solvents, notably trichloroethene (TCE), and the cyclic ether stabilizer, 1,4-dioxane (dioxane), have been frequently detected commingling in contaminated aquifers. Here we developed a sequential anaerobic and aerobic treatment strategy effective to mitigate the co-contamination of TCE and dioxane, particularly when dioxane is present at ppb levels relevant to many impacted sites. After the primary anaerobic treatment by a halorespiring consortium SDC-9, TCE was effectively removed, though lingering less-chlorinated metabolites, vinyl chloride (VC) and cis-dichloroethene (cDCE). Subsequent aerobic bioaugmentation with Azoarcus sp. DD4, a cometabolic dioxane degrader, demonstrated the ability of DD4 to degrade dioxane at an initial concentration of 20 μg/L to below 0.4 μg/L and its dominance (~7%) in microcosms fed with propane. Even better, DD4 can also transform VC and cDCE in tandem, though cDCE and VC at relatively high concentrations (e.g., 1 mg/L) posed inhibition to propane assimilation and cell growth of DD4. Mutagenesis of DD4 revealed group-2 toluene monooxygenase and group-5 propane monooxygenase are responsible for cDCE and VC co-oxidation, respectively. Overall, we demonstrated the feasibility of a treatment train combining reductive dehalogenation and aerobic co-oxidation processes in tandem to not only effectively clean up prevalent co-contamination of TCE and dioxane at trace levels but also mitigate persistent products (e.g., cDCE and VC) when complete reductive dehalogenation of less-chlorinated ethenes occurs slowly in the field.
KW - 1,4-Dioxane
KW - Bioremediation
KW - Cometabolic degradation
KW - Reductive dehalogenation
KW - Trichloroethene
KW - cVOCs
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U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145118
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145118
M3 - Article
C2 - 33610989
AN - SCOPUS:85101061267
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 774
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 145118
ER -