In-situ bioremediation of groundwater using a meshfree model and particle swarm optimization

Abstract

Groundwater contamination due to contaminants like trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene, dichloroethylene, phenol, etc., is an alarming concern for most of the manufacturing areas. It is important to identify the type of pollutant, concentration, location, and direction of the contaminant plume for groundwater remediation. Bioremediation has been identified as one of the important remediation techniques for these types of contaminants. Bioremediation modeling comprises solutions to biodegradation equations and fixing the time of remediation and locating the oxygen injection wells. In this study, a simulation-optimization (S/O) model based on the coupled meshfree point collocation method (MFree-PCM) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed for in-situ bioremediation design. The in-situ bioremediation process of groundwater contamination is explored using the developed PCM-BIO-PSO multi-objective model with different strategies of minimization of cost, number of wells and time of remediation. The proposed model can be effectively used for the in-situ bioremediation design of contaminated sites.