Oxic and Anoxic Waste Biodegradation

Contaminated soils can be mixed with water and treated in a bioreactor to eliminate biodegradable contaminants in the soil. It is possible, in principle, to treat contaminated soils biologically in place by pumping oxygenated, nutrient-enriched water through the soil in a recirculating system. 

The overall process for anoxic digestion is a generally metabolically complicated fermentation process in which organic matter is both oxidized and reduced it is especially suited to the destruction of oxygenated compounds, such as acetaldehyde or methylethyl ketone. The simplified reaction for the anoxic fermentation of a hypothetical organic substance, CH2O, is as follows  

The two general processes by which reductive dehalogenation occurs are hydrogenolysis, as shown by the example in Reaction 16.23  

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