Natalie L. Cápiro, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow Environmental Engineering School of Civil & Environmental Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Cápiro is a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Environmental Engineering working with Dr. Kurt Pennell. She has held this position since completing her doctoral studies at Rice University in Civil and Environmental Engineering in fall 2006. Her research interests are in the general areas of groundwater contaminant fate and transport and remediation technologies, with an emphasis on evaluating the interactions between microbial community response and physical-chemical mechanisms for the treatment of organic contaminants in aquifer systems. Dr. Cápiro also received her M.S. from Rice in CEE, and her B.S. from Cornell University in Biological and Environmental Engineering.

Presentation Description
Delivering electron donor at the non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPL): water interface to sustain microbial reductive dechlorination and thus enhance dissolution rates has proven to be challenging. The current practice of soluble electron donor injection achieves dissolution rate increases of 2- to 3-fold; however, donor is consumed in competing microbial processes, which limits dechlorination activity and requires repeated electron donor additions. An alternative approach is to supply partitioning electron donors (PEDs) that partition into and are slowly released from DNAPLs, and are readily fermented to yield acetate and hydrogen, which are the key electron donors for reductively dechlorinating bacteria. This presentation will discuss the results from a series of column and batch experiments performed using candidate PEDs, n-hexanol and n-butyl acetate, to determine equilibrium endpoints, which are crucial in predicting PED partitioning behavior, and to evaluate enhanced DNAPL dissolution through PEDs injections for successful field implementation.