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RT3D History & Acknowledgements
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To develop a fundamental basis for the design of natural attenuation and/or active bioremediation systems, a computational tool that can simulate reactive transport in groundwater systems is needed. The RT3D software was developed to address this need. The RT3D software has significant applications in areas ranging from risk assessment of groundwater pollution, management of large-scale groundwater plumes, design of natural attenuation systems, and design of active bioremediation systems. Over the past nine years, several researchers from various organizations have participated in the RT3D development project, and the key personnel and their contributions are acknowledged below:
Over the past ten years, environmental researchers have identified various type of microbiological process, observed at a field or laboratory scale, that could potentially be used for remediating petroleum compounds (e.g., benzene, toluene, xylene) or chlorinated solvents (e.g., PCE, TCE, TCA). However, there has been little advancement in the development of design methods that can translate these process observations into a viable remediation system.
In 1993, the U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) funded a 2.5 million dollar project for researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to demonstrate pilot-scale bioremediation of carbon tetrachloride at the U.S. DOE's Hanford site in southeastern Washington State. The RT3D code development activities were initially funded from February 1994 to September 1995 as a part of this bioremediation demonstration. Dr. Clement originally developed a one-dimensional finite-difference code (1DCART) for simulating bioreactive transport in a denitrifying soil column reactor. In winter 1995, this 1-D model was applied to simulate Hanford bioremediation scenarios, including carbon tetrachloride removal rates in a bench-scale soil column reactor. Later, the PNNL research team (including Drs. Clement, Hooker, Skeen, and Peyton) collaborated with Prof. Jim Petersen's group at Washington State University and used the 1-D code to model nutrient feeding strategies. The primary objective of the collaborative work was to optimize the nutrient feeding strategy to obtain better distribution of microbial growth at locations away from the nutrient injection point, thereby minimizing bioclogging at the injection well. Preliminary modeling results and the details of the mathematical algorithm were published in the following publications:
In the summer of 1995, Dr. Clement modified the numerical algorithms and implemented the simple aerobic reaction modules of his 1-D code within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA) MT3D modelling framework. This resulted in the first prototype version of the RT3D software (Reactive Transport in 3-Dimensions). A PNNL invention/new technology disclosure was later filed in February 1996. Simulation results based on the prototype code were presented to several prospective clients including Parson Engineering Science. Based on their review comments, a detailed proposal was developed to standardize RT3D and to benchmark its capabilities at a national bioremediation test facility located at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. The test facility was run by a joint team consisting of industry, research organizations, regulatory agencies, and consulting companies (e.g., U.S. DOE, Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. EPA, a university consortium, Dames and Moore, Geosync), collectively known as the Remediation Technologies Development Forum (RTDF). Dr. Brian Hooker championed the project development efforts and Dr. Clement led the modelling effort related to the RT3D design tool development task. The RTDF work was funded through a 1.5-million dollar U.S. DOE research grant over a three-year period (from October 1995 - September 1998). In 1996, Dr. Yunwei Sun was hired as a post-doctoral fellow at Washington State University (in Prof. Jim Petersen's group) to support the debugging efforts and to help benchmark the code against various analytical solutions. The second prototype version of RT3D, which supported simple recharge and well packages, was finalized in the Fall of 1996. This code ran with MT2RT, a data pre-processor developed by Dr. Sun, which facilitated the use of the RT3D within a beta version of the U.S. Department of Defense Groundwater Modelling System (GMS 1.0) software. Dr. Sun also lead the code validation efforts by testing RT3D results against various analytical solutions, including a new solution that he developed as part of this project effort. Further, Mr. Christian Johnson at PNNL tested the prototype versions of RT3D and MT2RT codes and developed a series of test examples. The PNNL-WSU team jointly conducted a training course in November 1996 to disseminate the technology to various RTDF members.
In winter 1997, a subcontract was signed between Battelle and the University of Alabama to revise the prototype version to include all MODFLOW source/sink packages (i.e., river, recharge, drain, etc.) and to standardize the code with the current version of MT3D. Dr. Clement and Dr. Zheng jointly worked at the University of Alabama and developed a multi-species version of the MT3D_DoD_1.5 code. Dr. Clement later ported all reaction modules into a new multi-species code. The first stand-alone, beta versions of RT3D (v 1.0) and the batch reaction utility BATCHRXN were developed in May 1997 and the details of these codes were documented in the following publication:
In 1998, the RT3D software was transferred to several industrial partners as a public-domain code, which facilitated integration of RT3D with commercial graphical user interfaces. Dr. Clement and Mr. Johnson managed key collaborative research efforts between PNNL and Brigham Young University's Environmental Modeling Research Laboratory (EMRL), the developers of GMS, to standardize the GMS interface for RT3D. A detailed user document was developed to facilitate the use RT3D within the GMS 2.1 environment.
From 1999 to 2000, the RT3D code was refined and maintained through funding support from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). RT3D was revised to support modeling of INEEL's Test Area North bioremediation project and a new version of RT3D (v. 2.0), which included MT3DMS transport routines, was developed. The compiled version of RT3D 2.0 had a limited release as a component of GMS 3.1.
In November 2000, Dr. Clement received a grant from the Australian Research Council to continue the development work related to the RT3D software. The work is also partly funded by the industrial partners Battelle Memorial Institute Pacific Northwest Division (Richland, Washington, USA) and EMS-i (South Jordan, Utah, USA). In addition, Dr. Clement also recently received a grant from the Korean Research Council and is working with the research partners at the Seoul National University to make modifications to the code and to develop new reaction packages to solve groundwater problems in South Korea. A new version of RT3D (v. 2.5) that includes several new reaction solvers was released in November 2001 (downloadable from http://bioprocess.pnl.gov/rt3d.htm). RT3D (v.2.5) is now a standard Fortran-90 code and should be compilable using any Fortran-90 complier.
Dr. Clement routinely teaches several professional training courses within and outside the United States. National Groundwater Association (NGWA) sponsored short courses have taught approximately 500 professional engineers and graduate students how to use the RT3D code. Details of some of these short courses are given below.
The RT3D code has received numerous awards and media citations, some which are listed below: