BIOSCREEN‐AT: BIOSCREEN with an Exact Analytical Solution

Abstract

BIOSCREEN is used extensively for screening-level evaluation of the transport of dissolved contaminants in ground water. The code has an effective graphical user interface that makes it ideal for use in both professional practice and as a teaching aid. BIOSCREEN implements the approximate transport solution of Domenico (1987). This note describes an enhanced version of the program, BIOSCREEN-AT, which supplements the Domenico solution with an exact analytical solution. The exact analytical solution has been integrated seamlessly within the BIOSCREEN interface and provides a simple and direct way to calculate an exact solution to the transport equation and, if desired, to assess the significance of the errors introduced by the Domenico (1987) solution for site-specific applications. The modified version of BIOSCREEN is designated BIOSCREEN-AT and can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.sspa.com/./software/BIOSCREEN.htm.

An environmental screening model to assess the consequences to soil and groundwater from railroad-tank-car spills of light non-aqueous phase liquids

“…6. As described in considerable detail in several recent reviews [38][39][40], the accuracy of the Domenico model depends mostly upon the value of longitudinal dispersivity and the position of the advective front of the plume. Since the problems presented in this study consider relatively short groundwater plumes because cleanup begins quickly after a spill occurs (e.g., 30 days), the modified Domenico model can be used because longitudinal dispersivity is small due to the short distance of the contamination plume.…”

Multidimensional analytical models for isotope ratios in groundwater pollutant plumes of organic contaminants undergoing different biodegradation kinetics

“…Comparisons of those solutions to the one given by Domenico [11] revealed that simulated results can differ slightly, especially off the central plume axis [19,34,42]. This is why later, a new version of BIOSCREEN-AT was developed [24,27]. This version is based on the accelerated exact solution given by Neville [24,27] which can be evaluated in much less time than the one given earlier [29,43].…”

“…This is why later, a new version of BIOSCREEN-AT was developed [24,27]. This version is based on the accelerated exact solution given by Neville [24,27] which can be evaluated in much less time than the one given earlier [29,43].…”

“…Analytical models have the advantage of being simple, and may be used by a larger group of users. The US EPA promotes analytical groundwater models such as BIOSCREEN [14,24,28] and BIOCHLOR [15,35] as tools for risk assessment. However, there is an ongoing discussion on some of the basic assumptions underlying reactive transport models for groundwater plumes.…”

Tool for assessment of process importance at the groundwater/surface water interface

“…These models, however, are restricted to modeling the transport of relatively few dissolved constituents in simplified systems. Despite these restrictions, analytical solutions are featured in popular spreadsheet tools such as the extensively used bioremediation tool, BIOSCREEN-AT (Karanovic et al, 2007) or the natural attenuation decision support system BIOCHLOR (Aziz et al, 2000;Clement et al, 2002). The ease of use and simplicity in modeling allow spreadsheet implementation of analytical models to serve as screening-level tools enabling decision makers to rapidly assess site conditions or investigate the need for higher model sophistication.…”