Bacterial transport in granular porous media: The effects of cell concentration and media pre-coating

Column transport experiments were conducted under saturated conditions to examine the effects of cell concentration and media pre-coating. Two strains of E. coli were used in the study; the commonly studied laboratory organism E. coli K12 D21 and a mutant of the waterborne pathogen E. coli O157:H7. Column experiments were conducted with both clean sand and sand that was pre-coated with bacteria. The influent concentration of the E. coli strains was varied over several orders of magnitude to examine the effect of cell concentration. Concentration dependent removal rates were observed for both organisms in both the clean and media pre-coated sand columns. It was also found that the media pre-coating either does not influence the transport behavior or it decreases the attachment efficiency. Although differences in transport are observed, these differences are not large enough to have a significant influence on the predicted travel distances.