TRANSPORT OF MICROORGANISMS IN THE UNDERGROUND - PROCESSES, EXPERIMENTS AND SIMULATION-MODELS

In this paper the major processes governing the persistence and underground transport of viruses and bacteria are reviewed in respect to their importance under naturally occurring conditions. In general, the simulation of the governing processes is based on the macroscopic mass-conservation equation with the addition of some filter and/or retardation factor and a decay coefficient, representing the natural "die-off" of the microorganisms. More advanced concepts try to incorporate growth and decay coefficients together with deposition and declogging factors. At present, none of the reported concepts has been seriously validated. Due to the complexity of natural systems and the pathogenic properties of some of the microorganisms, experiments under controlled laboratory conditions are required. A laboratory setup is presented in which a great variety of natural conditions can be simulated. This comprises a set of 1 metre columns and an 8 metre stainless-steel flume with 24 sampling ports. The columns are easily filled and conditioned and therefore used to study the effects of different soil-microorganism combinations under various environmental conditions. In the artificial flume natural underground conditions are simulated using sand and gravel aquifer material from the river Neckar alluvium. A first set of results from the laboratory experiments is presented together with preliminary model simulations. The large variety of observed breakthrough curves and recovery for the bacteria and viruses under investigation demonstrates the great uncertainty encountered in microbiological risk assessment.