Transport of Escherichia coli in Saturated Porous Media

This book examines the occurrence of hyper-exponential deposition of E. coli, and important indicator of fecal contamination, and the causes of such behavior. The starting point is the well known colloid filtration theory, followed by straining or physical sieving, geochemical heterogeneity, variable deposition rate coefficients, and preferential flow mechanisms. The case of Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, served to evaluate the importance of bacteria transport processes in a field situation. The text delineates a series of column experiments with glass beads of various sizes in which the attachment of E. coli decreased hyper-exponentially, or on a logarithmic scale in a bimodal way, as a function of the transported distance from the column inlet.