Application of enhanced annealing to ground water remediation design

Abstract

A methodology for ground water remediation design has been developed that interfaces ground water simulation models with an enhanced annealing optimizer. The ground water flow and transport simulators provide the ability to consider site-specific contamination and geohydrologic conditions directly in the assessment of alternative remediation system designs. The optimizer facilitates analysis of tradeoffs between technical, environmental, regulatory, and financial risks for alternative design and operation scenarios. A ground water management model using an optimization method referred to as "enhanced annealing" (simulated annealing enhanced to include "directional search" and "memory" mechanisms) has been developed and successfully applied to an actual restoration problem. The demonstration site is the contaminated unconfined aquifer referred to as N-Springs located at Hanford, Washington. Results of the demonstration show the potential for improving groundwater restoration system performance while reducing overall system cost.