Biodegradation of creosote compounds: Comparison of experiments at different scales

This paper compares the results of biodegradation experiments with creosote compounds performed at different scales. The experiments include field obs ervations, field experiments, large-scale intact laboratory column experime nts, model fracture experiments, and batch experiments. Most of the experim ents were conducted with till or ground water from the field site at Ringe on the island of Funen. Although the experiments were conducted on differen t scales, they revealed that some phenomena-e.g., an extensive biodegradati on potential of several of the creosote compounds, the inhibitory influence of the pyrroles on the biodegradation of benzene, and the biodegradation o f benzothiophene occurs only in the presence of a primary substrate. The ex periments show that some biodegradation processes of organic compounds may be common to different microorganisms.