MSE Test Facility. Various Government and commercial customers have used the MSE facility as an intermediate-scale test facility for more than three decades. Covering 53 acres, the site houses the infrastructure and a number of large-scale components to conduct scale-up and prototype testing. We offer customers focused, integrated use of the facilities with experienced staff.

The MSE Test facility, named the Mike Mansfield Advanced Technology Center (MMATC), situated in Butte, Montana, houses equipment and systems to test components, equipment, and energy/material handling systems ranging from bench-scale apparatus through engineering-scale demonstrations and full-scale equipment development. The facility buildings and infrastructure combine to offer customers a complete testing center - with indoor and outdoor testing areas, test bays, utility systems, and welding, fabrication, and machine shops that allow for on-the-spot changes and fabrication or modification of one-of-a-kind components.

Convenient Access. The site is located near the intersection of I-15 and I-90, in close proximity to the municipal airport and a major railroad intersection connecting north-south Union Pacific and east-west Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation rail lines. MSE offers a secure site that is available to the customer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The site has its own railroad spur that allows large-scale equipment and supplies to be delivered or built and transferred to our customers' sites.

Adaptable test areas. The site’s test and evaluation areas are adaptable to configurations for varied scale testing -from bench-scale to pilot-scale to intermediate-scale up to full-scale demonstrations. Support systems and utilities are available throughout the facility. As required, testing can be configured for either indoor or outdoor operations. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and control systems support are also available for all experiments.

Indoor and outside areas. Treatability studies can be housed in both laboratory and open area settings. At any given time, eight or more technology demonstrations of varying size are being performed at MSE.

Analytical Laboratory
Commercial analytical laboratory equipped to perform inorganic analyses, bacterial analyses, and physical testing parameters on sample types including water, wastewater, soils, coal, tailings, ores, hazardous wastes, and airborne pollutants. The laboratory is certified by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to analyze drinking water samples. All analyses follow stringent internal and external quality control measures. The laboratory is regularly audited by the State of Montana, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Research and Development, and private customers. Laboratory site

Resource Recovery Facility (RRF)
Accommodates laboratory-, bench-, intermediate-, and full-scale treatability studies. Almost any kind of equipment can be brought into the RRF, and our processes ensure accurate and defensible data. The RRF is equipped with

Building 50 - Special Purpose Industrial
Building 50 has a Special Purpose Industrial Factory Group F-1 moderate hazard structure occupancy classification per the International Building Code (IBC). This allows us to use it for assembling, disassembling, fabricating, finishing, manufacturing, packaging, repair, or processing operations not classified as a Group H hazardous occupancy. The ground floor is 152 ft long by 100 ft wide by 21 ft high and houses another treatability laboratory space. We conduct pilot- to intermediate-scale projects in this area. The building contains compressed air; plant water; a heating, ventilating, air-conditioning; small deionized water system; refrigerators, a drying oven, a fiberglass flow tank for flux measurements, and a band saw used to cut grout samples when necessary. Any equipment in the RRF can support projects in this building. Recent tests included two-dimensional foam box and ZVI column study to support Hanford soil and groundwater projects.

UL Listed Panel Shop. The ground floor of Building 50 also contains an Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Listed Panel Shop where we manufactures custom control panels used in a variety of applications. MSE is certified with UL508A in the United States and Canadian Underwriters Laboratory (CUL) for industrial control panels. Panel applications include SCADA, pump/motor/process control, and security/remote monitoring. Our staff is UL trained and are Instrument Society of America certified technicians and engineers.

Building 60 High Hazard Group H-1 facility
Building 60 has a High-Hazard Group H-1 structure occupancy classification per the IBC. This allows us to store and use materials that could pose a detonation hazard such as explosives, oxidizers, and reactive materials. The insulated steel building ground floor is 90 feet long by 100 feet wide by 30 feet truss height, has a reinforced concrete floor, overhead lighting, and heating and ventilation systems. It includes a 25-ft-long by 90-ft-wide by 25-ft-depth pit area with ground level and intermediate depth level grating, a wet pipe fire suppression system, walls with integral blowout panels, four axial fan power roof ventilators for exhaust ventilation, and an overhead crane with trolley and hoist rated for maximum load of 10 tons.

Advanced Control Room. The upper floor of Building 60 contains a 960-ft2 Control Room for remote monitoring and control of the projects conducted on the ground floor of the building. The control room uses fiber-optic switches to communicate with facility and test equipment. Multiple human-machine interface (HMI) stations are available for both control and monitoring of projects throughout the test areas along with a large video wall display. Camera and microphones are placed throughout to display images and record events. We also conduct training sessions in the control room.

Weld/Fabrication Shop and Machine Shop
A certified American Welding Society Weld/Fabrication shop houses certified welders who provide shield metal arc welding, gas tungsten arc welding, gas metal arc welding, flux core arc welding and plasma cutting. MSE has also welded a variety of plastic materials including acrylic, PVC, HDPE, LLDPE, polycarbonate, and polypropylene. The welding shop is part of the support line that also includes a machine shop.

Skilled and experienced craftsmen and engineers staff the Machine Shop. The shop includes presses, large radial drill, knee milling machines, lathes, metal punches, bench grinders, automated plasma cutting equipment, and vertical and horizontal band saws. This facility is used to support site-wide testing for fabrication and modification of one-of-a-kind components.

Test areas for field demonstrations
Open space at the facility allows for varied outdoor field demonstrations. For example, we have completed demonstrations of an Ultramicrobacteria Biofilm Barrier, Electrochemical Tailings, jet grouting, a mock hot cell set up using the Brokk Robotic Manipulator Technology, and tests for commercially available sorbent and grout materials using surrogates to evaluate solidification methodologies that have helped several DOE sites solidify low-level wastes. An intermediate-scale Test Cell can test a wide range of biogeochemical treatments at a scale that mimics actual field conditions. An underground verification test cell is available to test and evaluate new techniques and equipment. Settling and evaporation ponds, plumbed with a system of drains, pipelines, and ponds, allow us to treat wastewater effluent (containing suspended solids) via settling only.

Backed by experienced professionals and technicians, the facility buildings and services combine to make our customer projects successful.