The federal Office of Surface Mining and the United States Geological Survey have finished work on a significant enhancement to OSM’s popular mine drainage treatment cost-modeling software, AMDTreat.

OSM originally released AMDTreat a decade ago to provide a tool to State mining programs, the coal industry, and watershed groups to estimate the costs of clean up thousands of miles of streams affected by abandoned mine drainage.

AMDTreat uses site-specific information to estimate the cost to construct and operate a mine drainage treatment facility. AMDTreat was designed to accommodate variable site conditions and consider a wide range of treatment options and geographic differences in commodity and construction costs.

This flexible framework solidified AMDTreat’s popularity within the mine drainage treatment community.

The recent partnering between OSM and the USGS has expanded AMDTreat’s abilities by incorporating USGS’s PHREEQ software, which is a widely used geochemical-modeling program.

USGS scientists customized the PHREEQ software to simulate the treatment of coal mine drainage with chemical additives used to neutralize acid. The ability to model chemical reactions that occur when mine drainage is treated is important for accurately estimating the two largest components of treatment costs, chemical requirement and sludge production. Improved predictions for these two cost components will lead to improved cost estimates and remedial decisions.

Recently, OSM used AMDTreat at Ben’s Creek, a highly regarded trout stream in Somerset County, PA, that was once heavily polluted by acid mine drainage from an underground mine. The AMD heavily impacted all aquatic life in the affected area. A result of OSM using AMDTreat, the state of Pennsylvania will save more than $250,000 each year it was previously spending for chemical treatment.

In addition to improved cost estimates, the inclusion of PHREEQ into AMDTreat 5.0 also provides users with the ability to predict the post-treatment water quality for a range of treatment strategies.

Users can use the enhanced modeling capabilities of AMDTreat version 5.0 to examine the potential relations among treatment chemical, effluent quality, sludge quantity, and treatment costs. This powerful feature helps to ensure treatment chemicals are used cost-effectively and water quality improvements are maximized. Minimizing treatment costs while ensuring effluent quality goals are met could help industry, State mining programs, and others involved in watershed improvement projects.

AMDTreat has an extensive website where software can be downloaded free of charge and additional information can be obtained.

12/24/2012