Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2003ND27B

Modeling Groundwater Denitrification by Ferrous Iron Using PHREEQC

Institute: North Dakota
Year Established: 2003 Start Date: 2003-03-01 End Date: 2007-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $46,232 Total Non-Federal Funds: $93,849

Principal Investigators: [UNKNOWN]

Project Summary: Efforts by members of the UND denitrification research team show organic carbon and sulfide are active electron donors for denitrification in aquifers in North Dakota and Minnesota. We also believe ferrous iron is an active electron donor; however, the geochemical evidence for ferrous iron is more difficult to interpret. To do so requires advanced computational techniques, such as incorporated in the computer code PHREEQC (Parkhurst and Appelo, 1999) produced by the U.S. Geological Survey.Therefore, our objective is to use PHREEQC in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the hydrogeochemical environment that governs denitrification by ferrous iron and associated aquifer reactions.