Speaker
Description
Groundwater remediation places strong demands on treatment technologies, which must achieve effective removal of contaminants such as Bisphenol-A at trace concentrations while operating under site-specific hydrogeological and regulatory constraints. Circulation-based remediation concepts, such as groundwater circulation wells (GCWs), create controlled subsurface flow fields through extraction and reinjection, influencing residence times and contaminant transport. While granular activated carbon (GAC) is commonly applied in groundwater remediation, the removal of contaminants such as Bisphenol-A at trace concentrations can be kinetically limited by slow diffusion into GAC particles under continuous circulation conditions. These conditions impose strict requirements on the hydraulic efficiency and reliable operation of associated treatment units. In response to this need, we present an innovative adsorption-based treatment technology employing Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR) particles that are coated with a membrane doped with activated carbon. The membrane-coated MBBR carriers combine adsorption capacity with low pressure loss, making them suitable for circulation-based groundwater remediation applications requiring sustained flow rates and compact reactor designs.
The MBBR carriers feature a hollow, structured internal architecture that significantly influences local flow fields, mass transfer processes, and adsorption behavior, complicating performance assessment at the reactor scale. To address these challenges, a combined experimental and numerical framework was developed to resolve adsorption processes across multiple spatial scales. Adsorption isotherms and kinetic parameters for selected organic model contaminants were derived from laboratory experiments and incorporated into a cross-scale modeling strategy linking membrane-scale adsorption to carrier-scale and reactor-scale performance.
At the reactor scale, the system is represented using a dual-porosity formulation in which the mobile water phase and the immobile adsorptive membrane-carrier structure are treated as coupled continua. Mass exchange between the two domains is governed by effective transfer rates, enabling efficient simulation of adsorption performance, residence-time effects, and hydraulic behavior at realistic reactor dimensions without explicitly resolving individual carrier geometries.
The results demonstrate the potential of membrane-coated MBBR adsorbents as an advanced treatment option for circulation-based groundwater remediation concepts and provide a transferable experimental–numerical framework for evaluating adsorption-based technologies in environmental porous media systems. The proposed technology is suitable for integration with groundwater circulation well (GCW) systems, either as an above-ground treatment unit or as part of the GCW infrastructure.
Keywords: groundwater remediation; MBBR carriers; membrane-coated adsorbents; adsorption; dual-porosity modeling; environmental porous media
| Country | Germany |
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