SCALE-UP AND CHARACTERIZATION OF AN ENRICHMENT CULTURE FOR

ii Bioaugmentation has become an increasingly popular remediation strategy for groundwater sites contaminated with chlorinated solvents. When biostimulation is not an option due to the lack of necessary microorganisms required for dechlorination of the contaminants, bioaugmentation is an attractive option for remediation. The P-Area groundwater plumes at the Savannah River Site (SRS) are just such a case. The P-Area site is contaminated with tetrachloroethene (PCE), trichloroethene (TCE), and cis-dichloroethene (cDCE), and no dechlorination past cDCE is occurring. A similar site, the C-Area site, is near one of the P-Area site’s source zones but displays complete reduction of TCE to ethene. An enrichment culture was developed from the C-Area wetland for possible use as an indigenous bioaugmentation culture for the P-Area site. The culture underwent characterization in terms of potential terminal electron acceptors, pathogenicity, susceptibility to 1,1,1-trichloroethane (1,1,1-TCA), potential use of emulsified vegetable oil as an electron donor, and response to oxygen exposure and