Influence of mass transfer on stable isotope fractionation
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MINI-REVIEW
Influence of mass transfer on stable isotope fractionation Martin Thullner & Anko Fischer & Hans-Hermann Richnow & Lukas Y. Wick
Received: 14 August 2012 / Revised: 19 October 2012 / Accepted: 22 October 2012 / Published online: 11 November 2012 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Abstract Biodegradation of contaminants is a common remediation strategy for subsurface environments. To monitor the success of such remediation means a quantitative assessment of biodegradation at the field scale is required. Nevertheless, the reliable quantification of the in situ biodegradation process it is still a major challenge. Compoundspecific stable isotope analysis has become an established method for the qualitative analysis of biodegradation in the field and this method is also proposed for a quantitative analysis. However, to use stable isotope data to obtain quantitative information on in situ biodegradation requires among others knowledge on the influence of mass transfer processes on the observed stable isotope fractionation. This paper reviews recent findings on the influence of mass transfer processes on stable isotope fractionation and on the quantitative interpretation of isotope data. Focus will be given on small-scale mass transfer processes controlling the bioavailability of contaminants. Such bioavailability limitations are known to affect the biodegradation rate and have recently been shown to affect stable isotope fractionation, too. Theoretical as well as experimental studies addressing the link between bioavailability and stable isotope fractionation are reviewed and the implications for assessing biodegradation in the field are discussed. M. Thullner (*) : L. Y. Wick Department of Environmental Microbiology, UFZ—Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Permoserstr. 15, 30418 Leipzig, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Fischer : H.-H. Richnow Department of Isotope Biogeochemistry, UFZ—Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany A. Fischer Isodetect—Company for Isotope Monitoring, Leipzig, Germany
Keywords Bioavailability . Compound-specific stable isotope analysis . CSIA . Biodegradation . Groundwater contamination
Introduction The contamination of environments by organic compounds is a wide-spread phenomenon with serious implications for human health and for ecology (US-EPA 1996; EEA 2003; Schwarzenbach et al. 2010). For many contaminated sites, the degradation of contaminants by the in situ microbial community is a potential remediation strategy. Especially for subsurface contaminations such microbially driven natural attenuation is a common approach to clean-up sites, as residence times of water and contaminants are sufficiently slow and as alternative remediation techniques are often associated with high costs and/or technical challenges (Chapelle et al. 2001; Kaschl et al. 2003). However, even at contaminated sites supposed to be treated by in situ biodegradation a monitoring program is needed in order to assess the success of the natural attenuation proces
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