PHREEQC — The Complete Guide: Geochemical Calculations for Water, Minerals and Reactive Transport
PHREEQC from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a tool for aqueous geochemical calculations. It is US government software in the public domain, free for any use, with open source code.
PHREEQC
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Aqueous geochemical calculations — equilibrium, dissolution, precipitation and reactive transport.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Equilibrium — between solutes and minerals, including saturation indices.
- Dissolution and precipitation — which minerals will dissolve and which will precipitate.
- Ion exchange and sorption — including surface complexation.
- Mixing and titration — mixing water sources and the response to added chemicals.
- One-dimensional transport — reacting water moving through a column.
Engineering uses
Seawater intrusion into a coastal aquifer, groundwater quality around a contaminated site, corrosion and scaling in water networks, and industrial effluent treatment. The program ships with ready thermodynamic databases, and on Windows there is a graphical interface called PHREEQC Interactive.
Related tools
For groundwater flow modelling — MODFLOW 6 with the ModelMuse interface. For water networks and water quality in pipes — EPANET.
MODFLOW 6
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
The world standard for groundwater flow and solute transport modelling, from the USGS.
Get it from the vendorModelMuse
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
The free graphical interface to MODFLOW — build the model with a mouse instead of text files.
Get it from the vendorEPANET
US Environmental Protection Agency
Water distribution network model — flows, pressures and water quality. The engine behind most commercial tools.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
PHREEQC is the standard free tool for water chemistry questions — from the aquifer to the pipe network.