Use of Baker's Yeast to Trace Microbial Movement in Ground Water

Abstract

Field and laboratory tests were made using suspensions of baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) to trace movement of microbes in artificially recharged ground water. Yeast cells penetrated more than 7 meters into a sand and gravel aquifer in less than 48 hours. It is believed that most of the cells travelled through channels formed by the solution of calcium carbonate rather than through intergranular pores. Ease and sensitivity of detection, coupled with negligible background correction, suggest that baker's yeast is an excellent choice as a tracer for this type of application.

Transport and retention of high concentrated nano-Fe/Cu particles through highly flow-rated packed sand column

“…A1 in the Appendix section. Longitudinal dispersivity (a L ) of the medium was calculated from tracer BTCs at different flow rates using the analytical approach developed by Singh (2002) for advectiveedispersive transport of an ideal solute in homogeneous and isotropic porous media averagely equal to 5.7 Â 10 À3 m. It is known that the effective velocity of a particle in a porous medium is higher than the one observed for water and solutes (Wood and Ehrlich, 1978;Toran and Palumbo, 1992). However, under some circumstances, the difference can be neglected, and effective velocity of a particle can be approximated with the values obtained from tracer tests.…”

Processes in microbial transport in the natural subsurface

“…Size exclusion effects have been observed in laboratory columns [37,92,114,156,164] and in field experiments [50,172,189]. Exclusion is a phenomenon where transported particles move faster than the mean pore-water velocity, and involves an increase in the transport rate due to the size or charge of the material conveyed.…”

Transport and Attenuation of Microbial Tracers and Effluent Microorganisms in Saturated Pumice Sand Aquifer Material

“…At depths of 6.5 m and 7.5 m the velocity of Br − and E. coli was the same. Faster velocities shown by microbial tracers compared to conservative solute tracers has been also observed by many others (Matthess et al 1988;Sinton et al 1997;Smith et al 1985;Wilson et al 1984;Wood and Erlich 1978). It is explained by pore size (Pang et al 1996;Sinton et al 1997;Sinton et al 2000).…”