In Situ BioRemediation

Encotech offers packaged, in situ bioremediation systems for groundwater contamination. These systems combine the technologies of pump and treat systems — including iron removal, activated carbon adsorption, pH control, and more — with technology designed to enable naturally occurring bacteria at a project site to assist in remediation.

Naturally occurring bacteria have the advantage of evolution — they are adapted to the surrounding environment and are already processing contamination, albeit at a slow rate. Off-the-shelf bacteria cultures that have been tailored to specific chemical contaminants are not well-suited for every underground environment, and can be limited by their inability to quickly adapt to the site-specific water chemistry.

Rather than bringing a culture foreign to a project site, we have developed a method to deliver to the site’s natural bacteria the nutrients and oxygen required to increase their activity for efficient, aerobic digestion of contamination ranging from BTEX to PCB’s to MTBE, and more. Very little site construction is required in our method, with only extraction and re-injection wells necessary for a successful installation. All of the equipment in our systems can be housed in a portable trailer, and plumbed to these wells once placed on-site.

Encotech’s in situ remediation systems are intended to be used to a definite end point, rather than on an open-ended treatment schedule that is standard for pump and treat systems. These portable systems can then be drained and cleaned, and then moved on to the next treatment location. It is possible for a customer to use one of our in situ remediation systems to treat two or three sites in rotation, saving money on capital costs, and leading to less resistance to address the problem of site contamination.

For those sites that have a recurring contamination problem, our in situ systems can be housed in containers, sheds, buildings or any other available structure on-site. Treatable flows range anywhere from 2-5 gallons per minute up to hundreds of gallons per minute. The limiting factor to the amount of water we can treat is the ability for the subsurface strata to accept re-injected water.