Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

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Journal of Environmental Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman

Is there an environmental benet from remediation of a contaminated site?

Combined assessments of the risk reduction and life cycle impact of remediation
Gitte Lemming*, Julie C. Chambon, Philip J. Binning, Poul L. Bjerg
Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Miljoevej, Building 113, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 17 April 2012
Received in revised form
2 July 2012
Accepted 1 August 2012
Available online 15 September 2012

A comparative life cycle assessment is presented for four different management options for a trichloroethene-contaminated site with a contaminant source zone located in a fractured clay till. The
compared options are (i) long-term monitoring (ii) in-situ enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD), (iii)
in-situ chemical oxidation (ISCO) with permanganate and (iv) long-term monitoring combined with
treatment by activated carbon at the nearby waterworks. The life cycle assessment included evaluation of
both primary and secondary environmental impacts. The primary impacts are the local human toxic
impacts due to contaminant leaching into groundwater that is used for drinking water, whereas the
secondary environmental impacts are related to remediation activities such as monitoring, drilling and
construction of wells and use of remedial amendments. The primary impacts for the compared scenarios
were determined by a numerical risk assessment and remedial performance model, which predicted the
contaminant mass discharge over time at a point of compliance in the aquifer and at the waterworks. The
combined assessment of risk reduction and life cycle impacts showed that all management options result
in higher environmental impacts than they remediate, in terms of person equivalents and assuming
equal weighting of all impacts. The ERD and long-term monitoring were the scenarios with the lowest
secondary life cycle impacts and are therefore the preferred alternatives. However, if activated carbon
treatment at the waterworks is required in the long-term monitoring scenario, then it becomes unfavorable because of large secondary impacts. ERD is favorable due to its low secondary impacts, but only if
leaching of vinyl chloride to the groundwater aquifer can be avoided. Remediation with ISCO caused the
highest secondary impacts and cannot be recommended for the site.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Remediation
Contaminated sites
Groundwater
Life cycle assessment
Chlorinated solvents
Natural attenuation
Chemical oxidation
Enhanced reductive dechlorination
Decision support

1. Introduction
Contaminated sites are usually remediated because they are
assessed to pose a risk to the local environment (groundwater,
surface water, terrestrial ecosystems) and to users of the site
(indoor air risk, risk of direct contact with soil, etc.). The reduction
of the local risks, also termed the primary impacts associated with
a contaminated site, however, is done at the expense of increasing
the secondary impacts on health and the environment. These
secondary environmental impacts are the local, regional and global
impacts arising from the extraction, material, use and end-of-life
phases of all consumables, equipment and energy used for the
remediation, and can be quantied by a life cycle assessment (LCA)
(Lemming et al., 2010a; Morais and Delerue-Matos, 2010). An LCA
also provides a framework where the tradeoff between primary

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 45 4525 1595; fax: 45 4593 2850.

E-mail address: gile@env.dtu.dk (G. Lemming).
0301-4797/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.08.002

impacts (the local contamination risk) and increased local, regional

and global impacts from remediation activities (secondary impacts)
can be assessed. Environmental assessment methods such as life
cycle assessments are increasingly being required by environmental authorities when determining management strategies for
contaminated sites. Recent studies applying LCA for the assessment
of secondary and primary impacts of remediation include Sparrevik
et al. (2011a) who employed a LCA for the case of contaminated
sediment management, which showed that a do-nothing scenario
caused a much lower environmental impact than active capping
scenarios. Lemming et al. (2010b) compared the primary and
secondary impacts of three remediation technologies (bioremediation, thermal remediation, and ex-situ remediation) in a low
permeability clayey till setting.
Here, we examine the in-situ mass destruction methods of
enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD) and chemical oxidation
(ISCO) as these technologies are not well represented in the LCA
literature. Only one study, Cadotte et al. (2007) has presented an
assessment of the environmental impacts of the ISCO remediation

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

technology and it focuses on the use of Fentons reagent as the

oxidizing agent for groundwater contaminants. In this study we
consider the application of two other oxidants (permanganate and
persulfate) for source zone remediation of trichloroethene (TCE) at
a Danish clay till site. On-site activated carbon treatment of
contaminated groundwater in combination with remediation or
containment by pump-and-treat has been considered in earlier
studies (Higgins and Olson, 2009; Bayer and Finkel, 2006). A new
long-term monitoring scenario combined with activated carbon
treatment at the downstream waterworks is included as
a management alternative to remediation of the site in this study.
The long-term monitoring scenarios included in this study are
motivated by discussions in the scientic literature (Lemming et al.,
2010b; Sparrevik et al., 2011a) and among eld practitioners
regarding the benet of active remediation strategies at contaminated sites, requiring long time frames (e.g. clay till sites) and/or
signicant energy and resources for site cleanup.
Thus, the purpose of this paper is to compare four alternative
management options for the TCE-contaminated site using an
approach combining groundwater risk assessment, remediation
performance modeling, and life cycle assessment (Fig. 1). The
management options are: (i) long-term monitoring with no active
source remediation, (ii) in-situ bioremediation by ERD, (iii) ISCO
using permanganate or persulfate as oxidizing agent, and (iv) longterm monitoring combined with activated carbon treatment at the
waterworks. For each management alternative a groundwater risk
assessment and a remedial performance model is employed to
answer the following questions:

The model results are then employed with a life cycle assessment to determine the primary and secondary environmental
impacts of each management alternative and thereby evaluate the
overall environmental benet of each alternative. Such information
can be used as the basis for comparison and selection of management options for decision makers. Note that in this assessment we
exclude the evaluation of tertiary impacts, i.e. the environmental
impacts associated with the future use of the site (Lesage et al.,
2007).
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Site description
The concept of combined risk and life cycle assessment is
illustrated for a contaminated site located at Sortebrovej in Tommerup, Denmark (Fig. 2). The site is contaminated by trichloroethene (TCE), which is mainly located in a fractured clay till
between 13 and 23 m below ground surface (mbgs) and in a thin
upper sand aquifer located beneath the clay till. A conceptual
geological model and a transect of the source zone is shown in
Fig. 2. The contamination at Sortebrovej poses a risk to the drinking
water abstraction wells at the Tommerup waterworks where water
is extracted from the regional groundwater aquifer. The water
supply wells are located 200 m northeast of the contaminant
source zone. The remediation targets an 11 m deep treatment zone
which covers a horizontal area of 750 m2 in the clay till and
1500 m2 in the sand. The contaminant mass of TCE was estimated
to 23.4 kg based on source zone calculations (Chambon et al., 2011).
Full scale remediation by in-situ enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD) was started at the site in 2006 with the addition of
a fermentable electron donor (emulsied soybean oil and lactate)
and specic degrader organisms (Dehalococcoides) to the target
treatment zone in order to stimulate the complete microbial

 What is the timeframe required to reach the remedial target?

 How does the groundwater concentration vary in time at the
downstream compliance point?
 How does the contaminant concentration vary in time at the
downstream waterworks?

Life cycle assessment

Remedial performance modeling and risk assessment

Timeframe

WW
POC

Inventory of
secondary emissions
and resource use

Accumulated
intake

Concentration

Mass depletion
in the source

Concentration

Mass/flux

Inventory of primary
emissions

Time

Time

Impact assessment
Time

Concentrations at the POC and waterworks

Combined evaluation

etc

Global warming potential

Acidifaction
Aquatic eutrophication
Ecotoxicity
Human toxicity (non cancer)

Human toxicity (non cancer)

Human toxicity (cancer)

Human toxicity (cancer)

Normalised impact

Primary impacts (local toxic impacts)

393

Normalised impact

Secondary impacts (Local, regional and global impacts)

Fig. 1. Concept for combined evaluation of remedial performance, risk assessment and life cycle assessment. POC: Point of compliance. WW: Waterworks.

394

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

Fig. 2. Location of the Sortebrovej site and water supply wells in Tommerup. The transect runs along the groundwater ow direction and shows the initial aqueous TCE
concentrations [mg/L] and the conceptual local geology and fracture setup used in the model. POC: Point of compliance for assessing groundwater quality criteria. The point is
located 100 m downstream of the site.

degradation of TCE to ethene via the degradation products

dichloroethene (DCE) and vinyl chloride (VC). This study is partly
retrospective since an ERD remediation has already been implemented at the site. However, site remediation is on-going and the
timeframe for cleanup is not known (Manoli et al., 2012).
2.2. Management options
Four management options are considered for this site: longterm monitoring; remediation by enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD); remediation by in-situ chemical oxidation (ISCO), and
long-term monitoring combined with activated carbon treatment
at the waterworks.
In the long-term monitoring option, no active source zone
remediation takes place and TCE is only removed from the source
zone by dissolution in inltrating water. No evidence of naturally
occurring TCE transformation is observed at the site, therefore no
degradation was assumed in this scenario.
ERD is a bioremediation technology, involving the injection of
an electron donor (a fermentable substrate such as lactate, soybean
oil or molasses), and of specic degrader organisms (Dehalococcoides) to the subsurface. ERD stimulates the sequential
dechlorination from TCE to dichloroethene (DCE), vinyl chloride

(VC) and ethene, which is non-toxic and easily degraded (Scheutz

et al., 2008). The generated degradation products (DCE and VC)
are more mobile than TCE and will therefore be transported faster
out of the source zone than TCE (Chambon et al., 2010). The
substrate employed at the site was an emulsied oil substrate
containing soybean oil (60%), lactate (12%) and emulsiers.
ISCO enables a direct destruction of TCE to chloride, water and
carbon dioxide by the addition of a strong oxidant (in this case
potassium permanganate or sodium persulfate) and no formation
of lower chlorinated ethenes is expected (Yan and Schwartz, 1999).
A fraction of the amended oxidant is consumed by organic
constituents in the subsurface sediments. This consumption is
termed natural oxidant demand (NOD), and can be very large in
clayey tills (Hnning et al., 2007a).
The fourth management option employs a combination of
long-term monitoring of the site and activated carbon treatment
at the waterworks. Typical drinking water treatment in Denmark
only involves aeration and sand ltration. The introduction of
activated carbon treatment at the waterworks results in the use of
additional power at the waterworks because of the need for
increased pumping and the UV-treatment that is required after
the drinking water has passed through the activated carbon lter
(Cowi, 2009).

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

Due to the large depth to the source zone (>13 m), excavation
followed by ex-situ treatment is not a viable option for this site.
2.3. LCA approach
The functional unit, which denes the service compared in the
life cycle assessment, is dened here to be the management of the
target treatment zone which leads to a 99% removal of the
contaminant mass. The mass removal target ensures that the
Danish groundwater quality criterion for TCE of 1 mg/L is met at the
point of compliance 100 m downstream from the site.
The life cycle assessment considers the extraction of raw
materials, the manufacturing, use and end-of-life phases for
consumables, equipment, energy etc. used in the different
management options (see Fig. 3). In order to simplify the assessment, the materials used for pumps, mixing tanks and containers
for amendments were disregarded as they were assumed to result
in only negligible contributions to impacts due to relatively low
amounts of materials used and the high direct reuse rate. The
uptake of injection wells in the closure phase of the project was
disregarded due to uncertainty of the fate of these wells. If uptake
was included, the impact would be equal for the ERD and ISCO
system, whereas the long-term monitoring scenario would not be
affected. Furthermore, the CO2 emission caused by the degradation
of TCE was excluded from the inventory due to its minor contribution. The Life Cycle Impact assessment method applied was
EDIP2003 (Hauschild and Potting, 2005) for non-toxic impacts and
USEtox (Rosenbaum et al., 2008) for the toxic impact categories.
All results are normalized to person equivalents (PE) by dividing
with the average impact from a European citizen in 2004 (Laurent
et al., 2011a, 2011b).

System
boundary

Raw materials
and energy

395

Table 1
Site properties used for the inventory in Table 2.
Parameter (unit)

Clay till

Sand

Source zone area (m2)

Source zone depth (m)
Porosity
Bulk density (kg/L)
Inltration rate (mm/year)
Aqueous sulfate concentration in
source zone (mg/L)
Solid phase iron (III) concentration
in source zone (mg/kg)

750
10
0.3
1.8
75
50

1500
1
0.3
1.8
75
50

210

210

2.4. Life cycle inventory

The amount of remedial amendments required for ERD and ISCO
was estimated using data on site properties (see Table 1) and the
model-predicted time frames for cleanup (see Section 3.1). The
substrate demand for ERD was estimated to be the amount of
electron donor required to react with the contaminant mass, the
native electron acceptors in the source zone (mainly Fe(III) and
sulfate), and the dissolved electron donors transported to the
source zone with inltrating water during the treatment period
(mainly sulfate). A safety factor of 2 was applied in the calculation.
During the fermentation of the organic donor, all surplus donor was
expected to be fermented to methane and discharged to the
atmosphere.
The required amount of oxidant for ISCO was estimated to be the
sum of the natural oxidant demand (NOD) and the oxidant required
to mineralize the mass of TCE in the source zone with a safety factor
of 2. Previous laboratory batch experiments determined the

Raw materials
and energy

Raw materials
and energy

High density polyethene (HDPE)

Installation of
injection wells

Treatment of soil
from borings

Bentonite

Groundwater
extraction

Steel recycling
(80%)

Injection wells

Pumps

Containers
Gravel
CO from TCE
degradation
Closure and
uptake of wells

Steel

Remedial
amendments

Transport

Injection of
oxidant/ substrate

Transport

HDPE recycling
(80%)

Personnel
transport
Decomposition of
amendments

Monitoring

Production phase

Emissions

Use phase

Emissions
Local toxic emissions

Remedial amendments cover substrate and bacterial culture (ERD) and oxidant (ISCO)
Fig. 3. System boundaries of the life cycle assessment.

End-of-life

Emissions

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G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

The Ecoinvent database v.2 (Frischknecht et al., 2007) provided

inventory data for the background processes (such as electricity
production, steel production, transportation, potassium permanganate production and soybean oil production), and a full list of the
applied Ecoinvent processes are found in Table A4 in SI. The
Ecoinvent data was supplemented with additional data from the
literature for the remediation-specic processes (lab analysis, exsitu soil treatment, bioculture production and activated carbon
production), see details in SI.

Table 2
Inventory data for amendments added to the subsurface.
Parameter (unit)

ERD low
rate

ERD high
rate

ISCO

Substrate demand (kg) a

Groundwater use for dilution
of substrate (m3) b
Bioculture demand (kg) c
In-situ methane generation
potential (kg CH4/kg substrate) d
KMnO4 demand (tonnes)
In-situ CO2 generation
potential (kg CO2/kg KMnO4)
Groundwater use for dissolution (m3)

3700
65

5500
110

e
e

219
0.18

219
0.18

e
e

e
e

e
e

525
0.21

52,500

2.5. Modeling of timeframes and primary impacts for management

options

Assuming a H2 yield of 0.63 kg/kg substrate.

A 10% solution of the substrate is added to the clay till and a 1% solution to the
sand (Fyns Amt, 2006).
c
The bacterial culture, KB1, is only added once to the subsurface, i.e. during the
rst injection round, and is expected to sustain itself during the remediation period.
Therefore the amount is the same for the two ERD scenarios. The actual amount of
KB1used at the Sortebrovej site is applied in the LCA.
d
With a soybean oil and lactate content of 60 and 12% respectively, the methane
generation potential becomes 0.18 kg/kg of substrate added.
e
The permanganate is diluted to a 10 g/L solution.
b

average NOD for the site to be 18 kg KMnO4 per tonne of soil in clay
till samples (Hnning and Bjerg, 2003). For the sand aquifer a NOD
value of 1 kg KMnO4 per tonne soil was applied using typical values
for Danish aquifer materials (Hnning et al., 2007a). The carbon
dioxide generated from the reaction between the oxidant and the
soil was included in the inventory and assumed to be released to
the atmosphere. Table 2 lists the inventory data for amendments
used in ERD and ISCO.
The long-term management scenario combined with treatment of the abstracted groundwater at the waterworks uses
granular activated carbon (GAC). An adsorption capacity of 2% (w/
w) was assumed for the adsorption of TCE on to the GAC.
Compared to traditional Danish drinking water treatment with
aeration and sand ltration, adding activated carbon ltration
leads to an increased energy use of 10% or 0.025 kWh per m3
(Cowi, 2009).
Table 3 provides an overview of the activities included in the
LCA of each scenario. More details regarding the energy use for the
drilling of wells, injection and pumping is found in Table A1 in
Supporting Information (SI). The table also shows the material used
per meter well and the amount of activated carbon consumed.
Monitoring activities for all scenarios include transportation
(40 km return), pumping of groundwater and subsequent analyses
in a laboratory. The transportation distances and site visit
frequencies for the scenarios are found in Table A2 in SI.

A numerical reactive transport model was used to assess the

development over time of source zone concentrations and mass
discharge to the groundwater aquifer for each management option
(ERD, ISCO and long-term monitoring). The source zone model was
coupled to a groundwater model to predict the downstream
contaminant concentrations at a point of compliance located 100 m
from the site (Figs. 1 and 2). The source zone model calculates the
diffusion dominated contaminant transport from the clay matrix to
the fracture and the advectiveedispersive transport of contaminants in the vertical fractures. The reactive model includes the
sequential reductive dechlorination of TCE (trichloroethene) to its
daughter products DCE (dichloroethene), VC (vinyl chloride) and
ethane, and is described by Monod kinetics. The model approach is
similar to the model described in Lemming et al. (2010b) with
addition of a thin upper sand aquifer at this site (see cross section in
Fig. 2). Model input parameters are available in the SI, Table A5.
The remedial amendments (substrate and oxidants) are injected
by gravity feed into the injection wells in the treatment zone. The
injected volume is expected to mainly ow into the high permeability sand stringers and fractures in the clay till, and from there to
diffuse into the clay till and form a reaction zone around the sand
stringers (see Fig. 2). The geological proles from the site suggest
that there is approximately 1 sand stringer per meter of depth. The
extent of the reactive zones in ERD were set to 5 cm based on
ndings from clay till cores at the site (Manoli et al., 2012). For ISCO,
a reaction zone of 10 cm was assumed based on ndings from
another Danish clay till site (Hnning et al., 2007b). In the sand
aquifer, the remedial amendments are assumed to be homogeneously distributed and reactions are assumed to occur in the
entire volume.
For ERD two different sets of degradation rates were applied.
These were derived based on analysis of two different laboratory
batch tests data sets. The rates are referred to as low and high
rate respectively and can be seen in SI, Table A5.

Table 3
Overview of main activities included in each management scenario.
Long-term monitoring

Enhanced reductive dechlorination (ERD)

In-situ chemical oxidation (ISCO)

Long-term monitoring and activated

carbon treatment

Monitoring at and
downstream of the sitea

38 Injection wells (materials, installation

and transport)
Pumping and injectionb of substrate
and bioculture
Production, transport and decomposition
of substrate and bioculture
Monitoring at and downstream
of the sitea,c
Personnel transportation during
injection campaigns

38 Injection wells (materials, installation

and transport)
Pumping and injectionb of oxidant
Production, transport and decomposition
of oxidant
Monitoring at and downstream of the sitea,c
Personnel transportation during injection
campaigns

Electricity use for pumping and UV

treatment at waterworks
Activated carbon use
Monitoring at and downstream
of the sitea

a
b
c

Annual monitoring frequency.

Injection campaigns every 5th year based on ndings in Manoli et al. (2012).
Biannual monitoring frequency in the two years following each injection campaign.

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

Contaminant mass (kg)

Total concentration (g/L)

VC concentration (g/L)

rate at the waterworks Q (m3): C(t) J(t)/Q. The mass discharge

is the sum of the mass discharge from the source zone to the
upper and the regional aquifer, assuming that all contaminant
mass ends up in the water abstracted at the water supply. The
accumulated intake of TCE and degradation products for the
1800 people supplied from the waterworks is estimated by
integrating over time the drinking water concentrations multiplied by the ingested groundwater volume (1.4 L/day). USEtox
health effect factors are used to convert the intake to non-cancer
and cancer effects.

25

Mass depletion in the

treatment zone

20

397

15
10
5
0
6

3. Results and discussion

Total concentrations at
100 m

3.1. Timeframe for 99% mass removal in source and downstream

monitoring

4
3
2
TCE criterion

1
0
0.5

VC concentrations at
100 m

0.4
0.3

VC criterion

0.2
0.1
0.0
0

200

400
600
Time (years)

800

1000

Monitoring

ERD (low rate)

ERD (high rate)

ISCO

Fig. 4. Model results showing the (a) contaminant mass in the treatment zone, (b)
contaminant concentrations at the POC in the groundwater aquifer 100 m downstream
of the source (sum of TCE, DCE and VC), and (c) VC concentrations at 100 m. Note the
different scales on the y-axes.

2.5.1. Primary impacts

The modeled time variation of mass discharge of TCE, DCE
and VC is used to estimate the concentration in the groundwater
abstracted at the Tommerup waterworks located 200 m downstream of the source. The exposure concentration C (g/m3) as
a function of time t in the drinking water is estimated by
dividing the mass discharge J (g/year) by the annual pumping

The model results (Fig. 4) show that if remediation is not

conducted at the site, then it takes almost 700 years before the
contamination has leached out of the source zone. Remediation
with ISCO reduces this timeframe to 80 years, whereas ERD
takes between 90 years (ERD high rate) and 200 years (ERD low
rate).
The groundwater concentration at the point of compliance
100 m downstream from the source was modeled for all scenarios
and compared with the groundwater quality criteria (see Fig. 4). In
the long-term monitoring scenario, TCE exceeds the criterion of
1 mg/L for a period of approximately 800 years. Remediation with
both ERD and ISCO result in sufciently low concentrations of
chlorinated ethenes to comply with the quality criterion of 1 mg/L
for the sum of chlorinated ethenes. However, for the low rate ERD
scenario the vinyl chloride concentration exceeds the groundwater
quality criterion of 0.2 mg/L for a period of 300 years, and reaches
levels up to 0.5 mg/L.
In addition to the timeframes for removal of the source zone
mass, the model results were used to estimate the necessary
timeframe for monitoring in the source zone (set equal to mass
removal time) as well as downstream in the groundwater (set equal
to the timeframe for complying with the groundwater quality
criteria at the point of compliance 100 m downstreams) in each
scenario. Results are summarized in Table 4.
The modeled mass discharge (g/year) of contaminants to the
aquifer over time is shown in Fig. A1 in the SI. Based on these results
the accumulated amounts of TCE, DCE and VC leaching to
groundwater were calculated by integrating the mass discharge
results over time and are presented in Table 4. The model results
show, that in the long-term monitoring scenario, 23 kg of TCE will
leach to the groundwater aquifer, whereas remediation with ERD
will reduce this to 1.3 kg of chlorinated ethenes (ERD low rate) and
0.2 kg of chlorinated ethenes (ERD high rate). In the low rate ERD
scenario the emission of 1.4 kg of chlorinated ethenes is mainly
composed of VC. Remediation with ISCO reduces the emission of
TCE to a negligible level.

Table 4
Model-estimated timeframes for mass removal and compliance with groundwater quality criteria at the POC, and model-estimated leached amounts of contaminants to the
aquifer.
Timeframe (years)

Long-term monitoring
ERD (low rate)
ERD (high rate)
ISCO
a

Leached amounts of contaminants (kg)

99% mass removal

in source

Compliance with
criteria at POC

TCE

DCE

VC

670
200
90
80

830
400
10a
10a

23.2
0.05
0.2
0.007

0
0.3
0.02
0

0
1.1
0.007
0

The monitoring period was set to be 10 years even though the results indicate that there is no exceedance of the quality criteria at the POC.

398

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

0.35

Total concentrations at
waterworks

0.3

Concentration (g/L)

Total concentration (g/L)

0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0

0.05

ERD (low rate):

concentrations at waterworks

0.04
0.03
0.02
0.01
0.00

200

400
600
Time (years)

800

1000

Monitoring

ERD (low rate)

ERD (high rate)

ISCO

200

Sum

400
600
Time (years)
TCE

800

DCE

1000

VC

Fig. 5. (a) Contaminant concentrations at the waterworks (sum of TCE, DCE and VC), and (b) Individual waterworks concentrations of TCE, DCE and VC for ERD (low rate).

3.2. Exposure concentration at the waterworks

The resulting total concentrations (sum of TCE, DCE and VC) in
the waterworks for the long-term monitoring scenario are shown
in Fig. 5, which also shows the individual component concentrations (TCE, DCE and VC) for the ERD low rate scenario. The results
show that the concentrations at the waterworks do not exceed the
Danish drinking water quality criteria of 1 mg/L (sum of chlorinated
ethenes) and 0.2 mg/L (vinyl chloride) for any of the scenarios. This
is due to signicant dilution by uncontaminated water abstracted in
the well eld. If such dilution at the drinking water well can be
accepted despite the exceedance of the groundwater quality
criterion, then the long-term monitoring scenario is a possible
management option. However, if there are other point sources in
the catchment of the well eld then the total concentration may
exceed the criterion and an additional treatment at the waterworks
may be required.
3.3. Secondary life cycle impacts
The secondary life cycle impacts in terms of normalized
impacts in PE (person equivalents) are compared for the ve
management options in Fig. 6. Remediation by ISCO result in the
greatest environmental impacts in all impact categories and they
are on average a factor of 16 larger than those of the long-term
monitoring scenario. For ERD with a high rate, the magnitudes
of the environmental impacts are of comparable size to those of
the long-term monitoring scenario except for the ozone formation impact which is signicantly higher for ERD. If the low

reaction rate occurs in the ERD process, the remediation timeframe is doubled and the environmental impacts are increased by
an average of 70%. Furthermore, the results reveal that
combining the long-term monitoring scenario with activated
carbon treatment at the waterworks will increase impacts of this
scenario by a factor of 8.
3.4. Primary life cycle impacts
Table 5 lists the primary toxic impacts due to human ingestion
resulting from the leaching of contaminants to drinking water. In
the long-term monitoring scenario no source remediation is conducted and so 23.2 kg of TCE will leach to the groundwater leading
to a human toxic (cancer) impact of 15 PE. If source zone remediation is applied with ERD (high rate) or ISCO then this primary
impact is reduced to very low levels (<1 PE). For the low rate ERD,
however, the primary impact is increased to 42.5 PE as a consequence of the remedial action. This is due to the generation and
leaching of the degradation product vinyl chloride (VC), which has
a higher carcinogenic and chronic toxicity than the mother product
TCE. Thus, despite the release of only approximately 1 kg of VC, the
corresponding toxicity is higher than that of the original 23.4 kg of
TCE.
3.5. Environmental hotspots
Fig. 7 shows the contribution to the environmental impacts of
the different sub-parts of the ERD high rate, ERD low rate and
ISCO scenarios. The long-term monitoring scenario is not shown,

1500 PE
625 PE

Normalized result (PE)

160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Global
Warming

Ozone
formation

Acidification

Long-term monitoring

Terrestrial
Aquatic
eutrophication eutrophication

ERD (high rate)

ERD (low rate)

Respiratory
inorganics
ISCO

Ecotoxicity
freshwater

Human toxicity Human toxicity

(non-cancer)
(cancer)

Long-term monitoring and activated carbon

Fig. 6. Life cycle assessment results for the secondary impacts in PE (person equivalents) for the ve compared management options.

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

Table 5
Primary impacts in person equivalents (PE) of the 4 scenarios. The scenario longterm monitoring with activated carbon treatment is omitted, since it has no
primary impacts.

Human toxicity (non-cancer)

Human toxicity (cancer)
Sum (PE)
a

Long-term
monitoring

ERD
(low rate)

ERD
(high rate)

ISCO

ea
15
15

7.5
35
42.5

0.1
0.4
0.5

ea
0.15
0.15

TCE has no non-cancer health effects according to the USEtox database.

as monitoring (transportation, sampling and lab analyses) is the

only activity included and is therefore responsible for all impacts
except in the human toxicity (cancer) category, where the
leaching of TCE to the aquifer accounts for 17% of the total
impact.
For the high rate ERD (timeframe of 90 years), the injection
wells (installation and materials) are responsible for between 30
and 65% of the different impacts. The remaining impacts stem
mostly from the substrate, monitoring and the personnel
transport during injection campaigns, whereas the bioculture
and the pumping and injection only result in minor contributions. In Fig. 7 the impacts from the substrate are divided
between the production and transport, and in-situ methane
formation. The in-situ methane formation from the fermentation
of the substrate results in a very large global warming impact
(31% of total) and ozone formation (43% of total), whereas the
production of the soybean based substrate causes signicant
aquatic eutrophication due to the application of fertilizer during
the cultivation.
For the low rate ERD (200 years), the injection wells also make
a signicant contribution to the total impact, but the contribution
in percent is smaller than for the high rate scenario due to the
longer timeframe requiring additional substrate, monitoring, and
personnel transport for substrate injection. More importantly, the
vinyl chloride (VC) generated in the ERD process contributes
signicantly to the human toxic impacts (42% of the noncarcinogenic effects and 15% of the carcinogenic effects) in this
ERD scenario.
The potassium permanganate used in the ISCO scenario is
responsible for 88e92% of the impacts in all impact categories,
except the aquatic eutrophication category where it contributes
only 62%. Injection wells contribute 2e11% of impacts, and
groundwater abstraction and injection 3e5% of all impacts,
except for aquatic eutrophication, where it contributes to 24% of
the impact. The large environmental impact of potassium
permanganate is due to the large amount required (525 tonnes).
The environmental impacts associated with the application of
permanganate are mainly due to the energy required for its
production and a minor contribution is due to the road transportation of permanganate to Denmark. The in-situ generation of
carbon dioxide due to oxidation of the solid organic carbon in the
clay till sediment constitutes 13% of the global warming
potential.
In the long-term monitoring scenario combined with activated
carbon treatment at the waterworks, monitoring activities are
required for 600 years in the source zone and 830 years in the
downstream groundwater (Table 4) and are responsible for only
12e15% of the total impacts as seen in Fig. 7. The increased electricity use at the waterworks due to additional pumping and UVtreatment is the main reason for the very high impacts seen in
this scenario. The activated carbon contributes to 8% of the ozone
formation impact, but contributes little to the remaining impacts
due to the relatively small amount (1150 kg) needed to remove the
ca. 23 kg of TCE.

399

4. Discussion
4.1. Secondary impacts
The life cycle assessment of the secondary impacts of the
assessed scenarios showed that long-term monitoring and ERD are
the management options that have the lowest life cycle impacts,
even though these options have very extended timeframes.
However, long-term monitoring without actual source removal
results in elevated drinking water concentrations at the waterworks, where activated carbon treatment might be necessary to
ensure safe drinking water. In this case, the environmental impacts
of the long-term monitoring scenario increase by a factor of 8 and
disfavors this option. In this case study, the environmental burden
from the added electricity use at the waterworks was allocated
based on the mass discharge from the contaminated site and the
water volume this would contaminate up to the MCL. This resulted
in a contaminated water volume of 23 million m3, which is
equivalent to 170 years of drinking water production at this
waterworks. If the drinking water was already contaminated above
the MCL due to other contaminated sites, the burden allocated to
this site might be lower. It should also be noted that the assessment
assumes that the current technologies remain valid for the long
duration of the scenarios. This is a conservative assumption as
treatment technologies and electricity production will develop over
time. In the assessment of ERD it was assumed that all methane
generated by the fermentation of the substrate was released to the
atmosphere. This is a worst case assumption. The treatment zone at
the studied site is located 13 m below ground with an extended
unsaturated zone above it. It is therefore likely that a part of the
methane will be reduced by methane oxidizing organisms in the
top soil and this can reduce the impact scores for global warming
and ozone formation signicantly (refer to Fig. 7).
The secondary impacts of ISCO are much larger (by up to a factor
of 16) than those for ERD and long-term monitoring due to the large
amount of oxidizing agent needed. Even though the timeframe for
ISCO is long due to the mass transfer limitations in the clay till, the
impacts due to site visits for monitoring and injection are minor
when compared with that due to the oxidizing agent. This nding is
consistent with the LCA study by Cadotte et al. (2007) who studied
alternatives for groundwater remediation of diesel oil including
ISCO with Fentons reagent. Here large amounts of Fentons reagent
(14,250 tonnes) generated considerable secondary impacts due to
its production. Sodium persulfate (Na2S2O8) is an alternative
oxidant for chemical oxidation. For this site a persulfate demand of
300 tonnes was estimated based on an average clay till NOD of
11 kg Na2S2O8/tonne determined in laboratory batch tests
(Hnning and Bjerg, 2003) and a NOD for sand of 0.27 kg Na2S2O8/
tone (Tsitonaki et al., 2010). Fig. 8 compares the environmental
impacts of two ISCO scenarios applying permanganate (525 tonnes)
and persulfate (300 tonnes) respectively. The persulfate scenario
shows a reduction in global warming, ozone formation, terrestrial
eutrophication and respiratory impacts by 20e40% compared to
the permanganate scenario, mainly due to a lower energy use for
the production of the smaller amount of persulfate. However, at the
same time acidication increases by 80%, the aquatic eutrophication by a factor of 5, and the ecotoxicity and human toxicity by
10e30% (see Fig. 8) due to the high contribution to these impact
categories from persulfate production.
4.2. Primary impacts
The long-term monitoring scenario causes the largest release of
contaminant mass to groundwater over its timeframe (23.2 kg of
TCE), whereas remediation by ERD reduces this to 1.1 kg VC and

400

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

ERD (high rate 90 y)

Human toxicity (cancer)

Human toxicity (non-cancer)
Ecotoxicity freshwater
Respiratory inorganics
Aquatic eutrophication
Terrestrial eutrophication
Acidification
Ozone formation (Human)
Global Warming

ERD (Low rate 200 y)

Human toxicity (cancer)

Human toxicity (non-cancer)
Ecotoxicity freshwater
Respiratory inorganics
Aquatic eutrophication
Terrestrial eutrophication
Acidification
Ozone formation (Human)
Global Warming
Human toxicity (cancer)
Human toxicity (non-cancer)

ISCO (80 y)

Ecotoxicity freshwater
Respiratory inorganics
Aquatic eutrophication
Terrestrial eutrophication
Acidification
Ozone formation (Human)

Long-term monitoring and

activated carbon

Global Warming
Human toxicity (cancer)
Human toxicity (non-cancer)
Ecotoxicity freshwater
Respiratory inorganics
Aquatic eutrophication
Terrestrial eutrophication
Acidification
Ozone formation (Human)
Global Warming

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

Contribution to impacts

Injection wells

Monitoring

Pumping and injection

Substrate: Production and transport

Substrate: In situ CH4 generation

Bioculture

Permanganate: Production and transport

Permanganate: In situ CO2 generation

Person transport (injection)

Primary impact DCE

Primary impact VC

Activated Carbon

Extra electricity use at waterworks

Fig. 7. Contribution to total impacts (in percent of total PE) of the sub-parts of the remediation systems.

100%

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

1500 PE
1650 PE

Normalized result (PE)

350

401

300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Global
warming

Ozone
f ormation

Acidif ication

Terrestrial
Aquatic
eutrophication eutrophication

ISCO (permanganate)

Respiratory
inorganics

Ecotoxicity
f reshwater

Human toxicity Human toxicity

(non-cancer)
(cancer)

ISCO (persulfate)

Fig. 8. Life cycle comparison of ISCO using permanganate and persulfate as an oxidant.

0.3 kg of DCE (low rate scenario). The release of contaminants to the

aquifer is negligible in the high rate ERD and ISCO scenarios (see
Table 4). However, when looking at the human toxicity of these
emissions (Table 5), the low rate ERD scenario actually causes an
increased release of toxicity compared with the long-term monitoring because of the high toxicity of VC. Thus, the results indicate
that there is actually a risk of increasing the toxic release to the
aquifer when remediating with ERD.
ISCO reduces the primary impacts from TCE efciently,
however the addition of the large amount of oxidant may be
detrimental as it can contain heavy metal impurities and lead to
mobilization of naturally occurring subsurface metals as well as
precipitation of manganese dioxide (Crimi and Siegrist, 2003). The
toxic impact of this potential emission of heavy metal impurities
and potential mobilization of naturally occurring metals was
disregarded in the assessment of primary impacts as it is likely
that the metals will be demobilized before they reach the waterworks. However, in comparison to the original aim of treating
a source zone of 23.4 kg of TCE, the addition of heavy metals due
to heavy metal impurities could be signicant as described in the
SI, Table A6.
4.3. Is there an environmental benet from remediating the site?
Fig. 9 compares the total primary and secondary environmental
impacts of each management scenario in terms of PE, calculated by
the summation of the normalized impacts, i.e. assuming equal
weighting of each impact type. The long-term monitoring scenario
results in a generation of 15 PE of primary impacts due to the on-

Long-term monitoring
ERD (high rate)
ERD (low rate)
ISCO

2250 PE

Long-term monitoring
and activated carbon

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Total impacts (PE)

Primary impacts (sum)

Secondary impacts (sum)

Fig. 9. Comparison of total primary impacts (in PE) and secondary impacts (in PE) of
the ve management options. Note that the normalized impacts are a summation of
the individual impacts, i.e. assuming equal weighting of each impact type.

site leaching of TCE to the groundwater and 140 PE of secondary

impacts due to the monitoring related impacts of transportation,
sampling and laboratory analyses.
ERD with a high rate is the only option that can remove the
primary impact of TCE leaching without increasing the secondary
impacts. ISCO and long-term monitoring with activated carbon also
remove the primary impact, but does it at the expense of an
increase in the total secondary impacts by a factor of 8 (long-term
monitoring and activated carbon) and 16 (ISCO). Thus, only ERD can
be said to provide an overall environmental benet compared to
the long-term monitoring scenario. This however, depends on the
biodegradation rate; if the rate of the sequential dechlorination is
low, there is a risk that vinyl chloride will leach to the aquifer (ERD
low rate) and that the primary impact will increase due to ERD. In
this case, the overall benet of ERD is negative and long-term
monitoring is the preferred action.
The life cycle impact of the scenario based on long-term
monitoring combined with activated carbon treatment at the
waterworks depends on the allocation of the added environmental
burden of water treatment between the contaminated sites in the
drinking water catchment. In a catchment with many contaminated sites, this option is likely to be more favorable than in the
current study, because the impact of water treatment is shared by
many contaminated sites. Compared to other solutions at the
waterworks (such as establishing a new well eld, use of surface
water or desalination of marine water) activated carbon treatment
was found to be the option with the lowest environmental impact
in a Danish study (Cowi, 2009).
None of the compared management scenarios result in a net
reduction in environmental impacts in terms of PE. Therefore, it
could be argued that there is no environmental benet from
remediating the site. However, the evaluation of whether or not
there is an environmental benet is not straightforward. Introducing a stakeholder panel in order to elicit weights between the
different impacts quantied in the LCA might result in a much
larger weight on the local primary impacts than on the secondary
impacts which are aggregated impacts over a larger geographical
scale (Sparrevik et al., 2011b). The high secondary impacts obtained
for the ISCO technology and the long-term monitoring with activated carbon treatment, however, indicate that these management
scenarios are not well balanced by the actual local impact removed.
Note, that in this study we only considered primary impacts due
to groundwater contamination and subsequent human exposure
via drinking water. At this site there is no human exposure via
indoor air or via direct soil contact. The benet of remediating the
site would increase if multiple exposure routes were present.
Finally, the assessments in this paper are based on remediation of
a clay till site. Such remediation requires very long time frames and

402

G. Lemming et al. / Journal of Environmental Management 112 (2012) 392e403

a large amount of reactants, which obviously disfavors some

remedial actions. In high permeability settings with faster remediation, other conclusions may be reached.
4.4. Optimization of remediation timeframes
The long timeframes for remediation with ERD and ISCO at this
site are mainly a consequence of the clay till geology and the fact
that the horizontal sand stringers where the reaction zones occur
are spaced 1 m apart. This makes the diffusion from the clay matrix
to the sand stringer a limiting step for the cleanup. A model
sensitivity study (Chambon et al., 2011) showed that increasing the
injection interval over depth by a factor of 4 (injection every 25 cm)
can decrease the remediation time by a factor of at least 2, i.e. the
remediation time of ERD and ISCO can be decreased to approximately 40 years. Field tests with tracers suggests that a closely
space injection in clay till may be achieved using direct push
technology (Christiansen et al., 2012). Electrokinetic-enhanced
delivery of microorganisms and substrate for ERD is also
currently under development (Mao et al., 2012) and may help to
overcome the mass transfer limitations in clay. A shorter remediation time reduces the impact of monitoring, personnel transport,
and substrate use. Thus ERD can become more competitive with
long-term monitoring if the eld execution is optimized. ISCO will
also be more attractive if it is assessed over a shorter time period;
however the secondary impacts will not be reduced signicantly
since they are driven by the large oxidant amount required.
5. Conclusions
A comparison of four different management scenarios (longterm monitoring, ERD, ISCO and long-term monitoring with activated carbon treatment at the waterworks) for a contaminated site
was performed using LCA combined with remedial performance
modeling. Two ERD scenarios were included with differing degradation rates for reductive dechlorination (ERD low rate and ERD
high rate). If the source zone is not remediated and only long-term
monitoring employed, the model calculations show that the
groundwater quality criteria will be exceeded at a compliance point
100 m downstream of the site for a very long time (approximately
800 years). The drinking water concentration at the waterworks
will not be exceeded due to dilution with uncontaminated
groundwater in the well eld at the waterworks.
With ERD, the TCE contamination risk is eliminated, but in the
low rate scenario, there is a risk that the production of vinyl chloride causes the groundwater quality criteria to be exceeded for 300
years. Due to the higher toxicity of vinyl chloride compared to TCE,
there is therefore a risk of increasing the primary toxic impacts
compared to the situation where all TCE leaches to the aquifer over
time. With the high rate ERD, ISCO and long-term monitoring with
activated carbon treatment scenarios, all primary toxic are
removed. This, however, is achieved at the expense of the generation of much greater secondary impacts in the ISCO and the longterm monitoring scenario. ISCO generates especially high levels of
secondary impacts due to the applied permanganate. Changing to
sodium persulfate, an alternative oxidizing agent, does not improve
the environmental prole of ISCO.
A combined assessment of primary and secondary environmental impacts was made in this study. It was found that in terms
of person equivalents (PE) the aggregated environmental impact
generated on the global, regional and local scales was greater than
the local environmental impact removed in all the assessed
scenarios. Overall, long-term monitoring and ERD were found to be
the preferable management options as they resulted in the lowest
secondary environmental impacts. However, in order to be a viable

management option, regulatory bodies must accept that the longterm monitoring option causes the groundwater quality criterion
for TCE to be exceeded for 800 years. If long-term monitoring is
combined with activated carbon treatment at the waterworks, this
option will lead to larger secondary environmental impacts than
ERD, but will still be preferable to the ISCO scenario. Finally ERD is
only favorable if it can be ensured that it does not cause any
signicant leaching of VC to the groundwater. If such leaching
occurs, the benets of ERD are lost because even small amounts of
VC result in very high primary toxic impacts.
It should be noted, that the conclusions in this paper are drawn
on the basis of a case study with a clay till site geology resulting in
a long remediation timeframe. In more permeable settings with
faster remediation, other conclusions may be reached. The ndings
from this study show that risk assessment and life cycle assessment
of management options for a contaminated site can be combined to
provide a more holistic assessment and an improved basis for
decisions on the selection of a management strategy for a contaminated site.
Acknowledgments
The work was funded by the Region of Southern Denmark, the
Technical University of Denmark and REMTEC, Innovative REMediation and assessment TEChnologies, Danish Council for Strategic
Research. Mette Christophersen and Jan Petersen (Region of
Southern Denmark), Claus Westergaard (Orbicon), Arkil A/S and
Glibstrup A/S are acknowledged for providing valuable data on the
site and for the LCA.
Appendix A. Suppoting information
Supporting information related to this article can be found at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.08.002.
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