A large component of bioremediation or natural attenuation (MNA) is demonstrating that a specific biodegradation process is truly occurring at a given site. Stable Isotope Probing (SIP) is a technique that couples the use of stable isotopic compounds (as surrogates) along with molecular based biological tools (MBTs) to prove that biological degradation of a specific contaminant (i.e. benzene, MTBE, etc.) is occurring.
Applications Include:
- Is benzene being biologically degraded at my site?
- Will the addition of sulfate accelerate the degradation of MTBE?
- Is anaerobic oxidation of 1,2 DCE occurring?
MI has developed a direct in-situ technique
for performing SIP inconjunction with our Bio-Trap samplers. Using this approach, Bio-Trap samplers are "baited" with a known concentration of a 13C enriched compound (i.e. benzene, MTBE, etc.) and analyzed to determine the following information:
- Concentration of biomass which showed utilization of the 13C enriched compound (which proves biodegradation occurred).
- Determine the % loss and estimate the relative rate of degradation of the compound of interest.
Results from this type of study are determined using a modifed version of our PLFA analysis in which the uptake of the 13C enriched compound is determined for each fatty acid | Click
for more details
|
