Reductive dechlorination

The containment, trichloroethene(TCE) is used as a dry cleaning agent and degreaser. This chlorinated ethene is particularly dangerous as it is toxic and can easily contaminate groundwater. At an active industrial site in southern Ontario TCE had contaminated the groundwater. The remediation plan was to bioremediation using microbes to bio transform TCE to the non toxic form of ethene through reductive dechlorination.
Microbes of the genus Dehalococcoides are able to perform this transformation in the presence of an electron donor and carbon source.