Effects of Sulfate Concentration on the Anaerobic Dechlorination of Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Estuarine Sediments

  • Cho Young Cheol (College of Environment and Applied Chemistry and Center for Environmental Studies, Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Oh Kyoung Hee (School of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University)
  • Published : 2005.04.01

Abstract

In order to determine the effects of sulfate concentration on the anaerobic dechlorination of polychlorinated biphenyls, sediments spiked with Aroclor 1242 were made into slurries using media which had various sulfate concentrations ranging from 3 to 23 mM. The time course of dechlorination clearly demonstrated that dechlorination was inhibited at high concentration of sulfate due to less dechlori-nation of meta-substituted congeners. When the dechlorination patterns were analyzed by the calculation of Euclidean distance, the dechlorination pathway in the 3 mM sulfate samples was found to be different from that observed in the 13 mM samples, although the extent of dechlorination in these two samples was similar. It is possible that the dechlorination in the high sulfate concentration samples is inhibited by the suppression of growth of methanogen, which have been shown to be meta-dechlorinating microorganisms.

Keywords

References

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