The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
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welcome to scaling up the podcast where
we scale up on our knowledge so we don’t
scale up our systems
i’m trace blackmore your host for
scaling up
h2o every industrial water treaters
favorite podcast folks i am so
looking forward to seeing a select few
of you
when i’m going to be at the awt
technical training in just two weeks
can’t wait to see you there remember
again if you were not one of the lucky
people that won that lottery to get to
go to that fantastic event
you can still get on the waiting list
and hopefully the waiting list will open
up and you will be able to attend as
well
now for those people that are attending
please
find me i won’t be hard to find i will
be one of the instructors
no matter what class you take i will be
in front of you i pull a lot of duties
when i am at the awt technical training
so no matter what course you take i will
be
your instructor at one point or another
please come up to me
let me know what you think about the
show let me know some ideas
you have about the show let me know what
the show has done for you
i tell you when people come up and they
say
how scaling up h2o has either been their
friend
when they’re driving to customer to
customer
or they’ve been motivated to try
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or they have an idea for the show folks
i just get so
excited about that so please
do not deny me of meeting you
i look forward to that and folks if you
were not
able to get into the awt technical
training this year
don’t worry i am very hopeful that
all this stuff that we have been
enduring for well over a year
will soon start to go back to normal
i’m very hopeful of that there might be
some changes that we always have to deal
with
but folks things are going to get back
to more normal
and hopefully i will be able to see you
if you weren’t
able to make it now something i also
want to see you on
is we are doing a business webinar
series in conjunction with the
association
of water technologies folks we work with
a lot of associations it just happens
that we’re talking about the awt a lot
today
but the awt and scaling up h2o
are working together to bring you adam
lean who is going to be talking about
how to read your numbers in business
folks if you are in business if you’re
running a territory
if you’re running any aspect of the
business
you should know what your numbers are
telling you
and i know numbers can be very
intimidating
i really know that because i teach math
at the technical training seminars we
just talked about but when you take
your company’s numbers and you’re able
to apply
what you’re trying to do to what is
actually happening
folks that is data that you just can’t
replace with anything else
when i work with people at that level i
noticed
more often than not people are very
intimidated
of their numbers so they don’t look at
their numbers at all
folks there’s just so much data that
your numbers can tell you
and adam is going to give us
tools to allow us to use our numbers and
instantly right there after the webinar
you will be able to do something with
those numbers and his presentation
is all designed around getting
you healthier and making sure that
you are ready for growth i’ve known
adam for some time now and adam just has
a way of making
very complex cpa type stuff
seem very simple so you don’t want to
miss that that’s going to be
may 28th at 11 eastern time
11 a.m i’m not going to keep you up to
11 pm don’t worry about that
if you want to register for that and why
wouldn’t you want to register for that
you can go to scaling up h2o.com forward
slash
business everything you want to know
about the webinar and
upcoming webinars are on that page
i hope to see you there and folks one
more thing it is not going to be a
boring
webinar we’re going to put you in
breakout rooms so you’re actually going
to get
to meet some people you’re going to be
able to work on
something and the information that adam
shares
you’ll be able to practice right there
in the breakout room
so when you end that webinar when you
sign off the webinar
you’ll be able to hit the road running i
can’t wait to see you
may 28th from 11 to 1.
scout up nation there is no doubt about
it one of
my proudest accomplishments is being
able to come to you
each and every week as the host
of scaling up h2o and when i look at our
schedule and see that we are getting
ready for
episode 200 i am just
humbled thank you so much for listening
to scaling up h2o
each and every week but more than that
you’ve given us ideas
you’ve given us guests to talk to and
because of you
we’re going to have another 200
successful
episodes well folks we want to celebrate
you
on episode 200 so let us know what the
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let us know what your favorite show is
let us know something
that you feel you need to reach out and
let the staff of the scaling up h2o
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know about your experience and the show
we can’t wait to hear those and i can’t
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nation
on episode 200. go to scalinguph2o.com
and record your voice and folks we’re
going to celebrate 200
together nation one of the things i try
to do on this show
is bring you information about new
technologies well we’re kind of doing
that today but
i don’t know how new it is we’re going
to be talking about tannins i’ve
received a lot of questions
about tannins and we’re going to talk
about this in the interview
but the simple fact is tannins were the
original
water treatment chemistry so i don’t
know how new they are
but maybe we’re using them in a new way
so ladies and gentlemen of the scaling
up nation please welcome my guest
louis cloutier
[Music]
today my lab partner is louis cloutier
of
tgwt welcome louie
hi trace thanks for having me absolutely
thank you for coming on scaling up
h2o and i remember when i met you years
ago
at an association of water technologies
conference
and you told me what tgwt
stood for i knew that you were just a
cool guy and it was just a cool company
can you share with the scaling up nation
what that stands for
yeah that’s a part of the subject we’re
going to talk today so
tgwt stands for tannin guys water
treatment
so i just think that’s cool i did you
guys have like 20 names you were
deciding from how did
how did you decide i mean it says
exactly what you do how did you land on
that
we started the company at first and uh
the name was cerviva
for service vapar so in french is steam
services
and it was not working in english and
and when we
went to awt for the first time i think
was around 2010
um people were you know we were meeting
people here and there and people who
were telling us oh we know you are
you’re the tenant guys
so we said why not adopt that name
and change the company name and that’s
what we’ve did in 2012 so it became
tanning guys water treatment i love it
because it gets right down to the point
it tells you exactly
what you need to know and i think that’s
what this episode is going to be i think
today we’re talking about tannin right
yeah exactly you know louis so many
people talk about tannin
as if it’s a new technology but wasn’t
it the original water treatment
chemistry
exactly and um i don’t know if you ever
met
louis godbou the head of our rnd another
louie
but we we like to call him wiki louis
and he’s uh he’s been looking back in
many many things and he found the first
let’s say paper it’s it’s dated back 79
a.d and it was the first chemical test
ever described
for the complexation of iron with tannin
but let’s say to be a little less on the
geek side
in the industrial water world it it did
arrive mostly around 1850s to treat
steam boilers now you can disprove this
because i’ve heard it i don’t know if
it’s true or not i heard
that tanning came about and really water
treatment came about
where people would get water from rivers
lake streams
and it would have wood floating in it
and the
the water that had more what we know now
is tannin in it
did better in the boiler and that’s how
they first started treating boilers is
that a true story
yeah that’s part true story and we can
still see it today at some of the
accounts we’re treating where they’re
standing in the river where
we have to take it in account where we
do our
our testing but um yeah
the the the story i heard that was quite
in line with what you just said is
with some train line in the usa you know
some of them were taking the water
from uh water tank and galvanized steel
and some other one we’re taking the
water
with a tank made out of wood mainly
chestnut wood
and and these trains were going on
for a longer time without having to go
through maintenance and everything and
and someone
figured that out at one point and also i
think the
across the 20th century the british and
american
navies the tannin was their treatment of
choice
in fact the american navy’s thing it was
up until
1995 and their their guidelines
fascinating i love figuring out where
all the stuff that we’re doing now
really came from you know before we get
back into our tanning conversation would
you mind telling the scaling up nation a
little bit about yourself
yes and that’s maybe a little part of
of why we did we were able to do it and
make it a success you know i
i just i started in in my career
um working part-time and doing my
my university degree and i was working
at the renault depot
usability equivalent of home depot here
in the marketing department
and then i graduated from the business
uh
school university here called hec
montreal
it’s the largest one the largest french
ones in
in canada and they uh so my degree is in
international business but i did all my
high school
mostly on the science side and i started
university on the science side and then
i switched to inter
international business so i kind of got
both things in me
and the first five years uh after that i
i did the work
helping canadian and u.s company to um
set up either a research partnership in
france
or even open plans or offices so
i was able to meet a lot of different
people from
many many different industry high-tech
industries
so by doing that i discovered water
treatment and i discovered also
everything that was about 10 and then i
looked around and i
see what was on the market and then i
decided to
to launch the company in 2005
seeing that tannen was way different
than what was on the market at the time
and then i started to grow and grow and
then
i needed some private equity so i did a
financing round and i was able to get
some private equity in
and then i also became two times
a corn that is a german company that our
our technology partner on tannen also
became shareholders of tgwt so
that was a a really nice journey through
that
and i had the chance also to study in
france during my
university there’s a kind of a french
french line over here but it was not i i
went to france mainly because it was
in grenoble so it’s right in the middle
of the alps and
yeah the my little uh leisure favorite
leisure is
to do downhill skiing really yeah
so that’s why i i’m working also with uh
like uh companies like fct in colorado
i’m only aiming at the mountains
now that’s the job but i have the the
the chance to have uh
customers uh in in north america
everywhere and in europe so i can also
mix the skiing with my my job so that’s
great
that’s how to do it you know i remember
geez it was
five six years ago i got the pleasure my
wife and i went to quebec city hands
down
the friendliest cleanest place i have
ever visited that’s that’s a good word
yeah
it’s uh when people come to montreal
montreal
a bit more similar than another um north
american city there’s a historic part to
it that’s quite unique
but then when you go to quebec city
quebec city is really really charming
and on the just on the verge of the
saint lawrence river
and and it’s quite also the hills going
down to the river so it’s
yeah you’re right it’s a really really
nice city
yeah we really enjoyed it uh in fact my
wife was trying to practice her french
and and
you know in the south we say bless your
heart but she was doing her best
and she had she apologized to this one
lady that was in the store and she said
no no please
talk to me in english i really want the
opportunity to practice and we just
thought that was fantastic
yeah that’s the unique part you know
sometimes people come in canada they do
toronto
some and then they they think they’ve
seen it all but the fact that
uh let’s say just montreal the city by
itself is 3 million people and 1.5 are
english and 1.5 are french and then the
rest of the state is mostly french
so it brings a unique unique twist to
the north american life compare maybe
the rest of canada is a bit more similar
to
to any other u.s states maybe
well nation if you’re listening and
you’re trying to figure out a vacation
spot i highly recommend quebec city
yeah yeah and it’s it’s nice in the
winter or in the summer both
both seasons are nice uh different
things to see
just a bigger winter coat to wear
[Laughter]
well let’s get back to our original
conversation
so if somebody just joined and they have
no idea
what tannin is how would you describe it
to them
yeah tannins comes from uh it’s a
natural extract you can there is
over 3000 species identified the one
we’re using come from
the bark of trees so um
two things we’ve talked a bit about the
history of tannin
and how people in the 90s or maybe
70s or 90s let let it go in their
product line
and that’s where we did figure out with
our german
partners how to purify them because if
you look at the 3000 species it’s a
natural product so
so everything’s natural it has some
impurities and
and some of the tannin species can have
up to
70 percent of impurities and some of
these impurities
are sugar so you probably know that you
don’t want sugar in a boiler
so so once you figure out which species
are the best
to go against corrosion to disperse
to to do the proper job under pressure
and temperature
then you select the species and then you
purify them and that’s how we arrive to
our product that we like to call
purified tenants
now what types of systems do tannins go
in
the one that we have the most
installation in in north america is
steam boilers and in europe
but we also use uh tannin on
closed loop either eating closed loop or
cooling closed loop
just the cooling closed loop that are
really a closed loop
not a a close and open loop because
tannin like i was saying will fix oxygen
so if it’s a
loop that i have an open tank usually
it’s not the best in that case
but yeah that’s the two application
we’re using it for
steam boilers and closed loops i know a
lot of
people listening are servicing
food accounts where they can only bring
so
many products and they have to have some
sort of
special label on them saying that
they’re safe to work with food
is tanning a good choice for that yes
we have that question all the time
the there’s two or three um side to that
answer
yeah if you look in the fda uh
regulation
tannins are there and and there’s no
limitation to it so
so it’s really uh compliant on on fda
we are also kosher and uh yeah
the fda part is also direct contact with
food
we have two blends one that is only
tannin and one
one that is tannin and ammonia and we
decided also to go with ammonia because
it’s
uh also uh the only one that is
tolerated in
the dairy industry but maybe the last
part is the
yeah usda or or organic certification
it’s a bit of a gray zone
for the border product because they they
tend to overlook at it
but it’s not really in the regulation so
we were able to get some registration
let’s say with pennsylvania certified
organic
and we’re in a process to get a
certification from a
a broader organization called omri
the organic material review institute
so it’s one of the large one let’s say
overseeing the
organic certification in us in canada
so i’m curious how does the tan and
chemistry
work you know at awt we’re always
talking about how
saw fight works and all the other stuff
how does tanning work
yeah that’s uh that’s also a good
question we did
presented over time a couple conference
at awt and some of them were also
published in the
the analyst but let’s say if you look at
the tannin by themselves
they replace the two products that
you’re using they replace your sulfite
and they will replace your
polymer slash dispersant that you’re
going to use so
so if you look at tannin there’s a
tropolone
group to it and that group will will
take care of scavenge
oxygen and if you look at the reaction
curve of
tannin and oxygen it’s really really as
almost a copy of the the catalyzed
sulfide curve
it will react faster with ph and faster
with temperature
so it’s really really similar in that
that fact then
you’re gonna use a little less tannin to
do the same job as
the sulfite for the polymer part tendon
have the the the property to
to disperse and avoid the position
in the boiler but it’s one also of the
the only border product that will also
have an effect on chelate
chelating on the surface so it will
that was the last paper we did at awt
last year
we were able to prove that tannin will
interlink with the magnetite and
form a thinner and and more robu
robust film on metal than than the usual
because
conventional product will create the
right environment
for the magnetite film to form but it
will
they won’t have any effect on the
magnetite itself you know so
and when you look at how magnetite
behave it’s gonna
at one point larger crystals are pushing
out and
and you’re gonna have exposed surface
from time to time
all over the boiler you know it’s just a
continuous movement
everything’s to be covered back but
and when you add tannin to that mix the
film is really
even on the surface and and you really
need to scrub it off if you
if you want to get rid of it and then
the last part is condensate treatment so
some of the people in u.s use tannin to
replace polymer and sulfite
and they keep their amines to treat
their condensate
but we also have a like i was telling
earlier
a product that’s all in one where we add
ammonia
and then ammonia will treat will be the
part that will be volatile
in the steam to treat the condensate and
and
while we picked ammonia for dairies but
also because the distribution ratio of
ammonia is is
one of the highest so it’s a true
product that’s working really well in
almost all environments
where’s the ideal place to feed tannin
it would be uh where you feed your
sulfite so in the
the aerator or in your feed tank and
with sulfite we’re always looking at a
feed water temperature
of about 180 190 of course the deaerator
that has to be working right
i’m assuming the same things apply for
tannin as well
exactly because they they behave really
similarly so the
warmer the water is the faster the
reaction will be
and in fact let’s say we were seeing it
too if you have an installation where
temperature is 110 because they either
don’t
preheat the feed tank or or it’s broken
then tannins are more expensive than
sulfite just to do that so that that
will be a part where
temperature are is maybe even a little
more important than sulfite
how do you test for tannin there’s two
or three
things the some people are over time
i’ve tried
the out of the shell generic test you
know to
to test our tannin and it’s not working
well for our tannins so
there’s two way we were we’re doing it
one is we came out with an absorbance
curve
on all the the different color meters so
uh we can give you the curve for a hack
device a lovely bun
pixes and we can program it into it and
and
tailor also so uh so then you you’re
gonna do your zero
then you’re gonna take your border water
filtrate it through a 0.22 micron filter
and then put it in the in the color
meter and then you’ll have a reading
and what you’re going to read on on that
meter the target for a clean border is
175
and then when you have scale it will be
225.
the other part where it’s smaller
accounts we have just
a regular color comparison test
where we print here in our office and
send it to our distributor
uh a laminated page with
three different colors too low two eye
and the right zone
and we are giving them the glass bottle
that is the same we took in the picture
and for a small installation you know
the uh the color meter try to reproduce
what the human eyes
is seeing for small installations it’s
really good enough to
to test well lots of great information
about tannin and i’m sure
people are thinking this what are some
of the reasons that we
need to consider changing from a typical
chemistry
over to tannen there is multiple
advantage let’s say
the the the green part of it it’s if you
just compare toxicity of the different
tree products compared to one and the
content of every product that’s maybe
a good step to to go for a greener
chemistry
then you you’ll have reduced oohs
risk handling less product and handling
a product that’s less
hazardous and uh the main thing is
our purified tenon let’s say compared to
the tenon that that probably some of
your
audience did know in the past we’re able
to increase cycles in steam borders so
usually we’re able to triple cycles
so that means that we’re going to be
able to
reduce the blowdown by 50 to 80 percent
we’re going to be able to reduce the
energy consumption
and the greenhouse gas emission from one
to five percent
and the water that make up water usage
from eight to twenty percent
so uh it’s quite interesting to
to do that uh for you as uh
bringing that to your customer and then
the the compliance are
are higher and higher to reduce the the
consumption
of water and energy so it it fits right
in
so concentrating the boiler water so
much do you get to a point where you’re
exceeding the
asme and american boiler manufacturer
association
guidelines most of the time yes we do
there could be also a middle target
where
most of the other products don’t let’s
say maximize the asme limits they
they’re about halfway through the limits
so just going to the limit usually you
can double your cycle
and that’s usually where we start you
know the first month
people increase cycles increase
conductivity slowly
and they could see that all the
parameters are stable you know the steam
quality
is staying the same the boiler water
will be quite translucent and the only
difference is the there will be a
whiskey or a
sweet tea color depending on your
reference
and you you’ll make you’ll see that and
usually
the customer or the word feature that
been using it for the first time because
it’s so
different it’s so different then they’ll
take confidence in the product and
that’s where they’re going to push
a little higher and it’s it’s a matter
of
cycle also because we’ve got some feed
mills that are running at 35 000 in
conductivity
and we’re not changing any parameters
we’ve got some
here a large pop and paper mill on
just biomass borders so you would agree
not the
fastest to react and they’re running at
300 cycles in the border
and their steam quality is 8 micro moles
so it’s quite amazing what are the
typical operating parameters of a steam
boiler operating on tannin
i would say if you take what’s what we
see that is the most usual so you have
soft water coming in and if you have uh
city water or something the soft water
conductivity would be 200 to
50 to 300 with maybe hardness at 120 ppm
it’s all it’s like any
border treatment you need to have
softened water after that
but let’s say you’re at 100 in your feed
tank we’re going to aim at at the
10 000 and reach 100 cycles in the
boiler so that’s
the usual application let’s say
are there any known issues with using
tannin
there there’s known issues there’s maybe
um two way i can answer that there’s
part that if you have a lot of carryover
in your plants before
starting the tannin because if you’ve
been treating boilers you know that
i don’t know two maybe or three out of
ten will have some mechanical issues
pressure drop when the when the pressure
is dropping more than four psi then
you change your boiling point and and
you’ll carry water in your steam so
some of the accounts were doing it for
years and they never noticed it or
even worse you know not to talk against
the large water treaters but some of
them don’t even ask to test
test the condensate quality so so
if you’re aware to start with that
there’s a lot of carryover
you better fix the mechanical issue
before starting
because like i was saying the color will
be kind of a whiskey color so
so usually you don’t want that color in
your steam that could be also an
advantage on the other side because if
you didn’t know that was happening
the color will really help you to find
these mechanical problems
one of the story i like to talk about
that was
we started a dairy that was doing
evaporated milk and then
across the first one they called me and
and they say
hey louis we have a problem we see red
water in our
like butter tub and we don’t we don’t
like that i said yeah i don’t like it
too
and then we i i stood uh on my side that
tannen
chemically cannot carry over in steam
and then we looked
i i was lucky because they have a really
good
and knowledgeable operators and we we
did look at the process thoroughly
and and they found out that you know
when you do evaporated milk
you need one pounds of steam to
evaporate one pound of milk but
then it’s costly so if you want to
increase that you’re going to put
the milk side under vacuum so then a
pound of steam will give you more than a
pound of milk you know
so by doing that they had three
different lines
they were that was on vacuum and
they didn’t notice and it did happen for
for a couple years before but
they had some panels in one of the
production line
so when that line was switching on they
were pulling
sucking water out of the boiler to that
line
so before noticing it because of the
tannin color
they used to run three vacuum pumps uh
full load 24 hours a day and once they
they find that problem then they were
only running two pumps and
50 percent load so so that was kind of
a bonus saving for them but
that’s to come back to your question
that’s the part where people sometimes
are afraid
as soon as they see color and it’s
always mechanical but sometimes people
you know you need to go through that
phase where
where people are a bit more afraid and
then
work with them to find where it’s coming
from louis can you over feed the product
you can do that the only sad person will
be the one paying because
yeah tannen per pounds are more
expensive
but we did publish a paper
a couple years ago at awt where we did
prove
that you know you need a certain amount
to cover the surface but
once that part is done then any
tenon you’ll add to it will not do a
multi-layer film on boilers it will just
be
wasted you know so you can
increase a bit of dosage if you know if
you have scale or corrosion because
tannin
will help you get rid of scale of
corrosion because it’s reacting with
oxygen i was talking about but it’s also
reacting with
hardness so it will go after that
hardness part in the build up
and maybe to complement on on your
question where
it’s not working usually as uh
conventional water treaters we learn
that like you said don’t put too much
product
and if you want to descale a product
then you need to go slowly
to make sure you’re not creating any
chips especially in water tube spoiler
and if you do that with tannin you’ll go
to a failure
almost for sure so so you have to
listen to the manufacturer so tgwt
recommendation
and then increase the tenant level so if
you instead of the 175 i was talking if
you go to 225 so about 30
more then you’ll make sure to put all
the
build ups into solution and everything
will go out through the bottom and
surface blowdown
and then you’ll have a tremendous
inspection but if you’re
cheaping on it there then there’s not
enough tannin because it’s a
multi-function
molecule so to go after oxygen
to coat the surface and then to
descale the boiler then you won’t have
enough and
that’s where you can see chips happening
if you feel you don’t put enough
back in the day i remember my dad would
descale a boiler using edta
and he would discontinue the phosphate
feed when he was feeding edta
and he was always testing for phosphate
in the boiler to see
when to stop the edta so when as the
scale was liberating off it was
also liberating phosphate and he was
able to test that in his system
are there any tricks like that when
we’re using tannin to descale
there’s a bit that just if you look at
our sds you you’ll notice that but there
there’s a bit of vdt in the product
we’re able since
the all the study we published we were
able to
to prove that that protective film is so
strong that
that if we’re adding a bit of vdta to
our mix we can have it as an entrance
policy because you were saying
when we increase cycles in a boiler yes
you’re
outside of the norm so if your let’s say
your softeners are
suddenly breaking up or there’s hardness
going through
then you need a bit of that edt to make
sure to to be able to face that
upset in hardness but back to the
descaling question
we’ve did it with larger accounts again
in the pulp and paper industry because
we have many we’re treating many of
large pop and paper mills
where we did a pre-inspection and we
could see clearly that there was a lot
of scale in their boilers so we can do
transport studies
so there’s two way uh you can either
send a sample and we
we’re gonna help you to figure out how
much scale you’re taking out of the
border
or since most of your audience are
are knowledgeable water treaters we can
teach them how to do it and they
they they have to take the color out of
the water for the tannin to measure the
to the trends to do the transport study
and the only way that is important is to
reduce your
your tanning consumption once you the
most of the scale is gone because if you
continue to
let’s say put double the dosage of
tannin
in line with your previous question it
won’t create any chemical problem
except being a bit too expensive
so louis you own a water treatment
company that happens to provide
products of tannin to other water
treaters
but that being said you could use
anything
you want in your water treatment arsenal
but all you use is tannin correct
exactly
so yeah when we started the business in
2005 i only had tannins
on my shelves and it’s been like this
ever since
so some people are asking me where does
it work and it’s not working
here’s since it was always our only
option we have
small and large customer agree food
hospital university pulp and paper
textile chemicals so any type of
application usually can work
except the thing i was telling you if
you know there’s carryover maybe i would
avoid it
and the other part is uh we started as a
water treatment company here in in
quebec
in the quebec state or province and and
then we expand a bit in ontario because
it’s the next state
but at one point we were growing fast
and and like you said uh
trace we met at awt almost 10 years ago
and we needed to team up with people in
u.s because we started our first sale
in the us in 2008 and it was a
subsidiary of uh
two large one subsidiary and one uh
supplier of
a large account we had here in quebec so
they were based in south carolina and
that’s where we met john harrelson that
was the owner of
aj chemical at the time and he sold aj
chemical to cruff
and we started to work with john and
that’s where we learned about awt and we
said
what how about you know instead of
trying to push our own sales force
partner up with the awt member outside
of quebec and ontario
so i like to keep that water treatment
part because
we’re hands-on so so we’re servicing
direct account we’re developing sales
we’re approaching
prospects uh doing monthly service visit
and that’s really important for me
because then when i speak to business
owner like you
trace i know what i’m talking about and
if you’re coming up with some issues
usually we’ve been already working on it
or already have a solution because we’re
going through the same
daily task or weekly task as you are
we have so many different types of water
treaters that listen
to this podcast some have been in the
industry for
years some have been in the industry for
days
is there a certain amount of skill set
that’s needed to properly deliver a
tandem program
yeah the there’s a fun part to that
because
i heard from some of our distributor in
usa that
for their new team members like the new
water treaters
by the way congrats on choosing this
career
because it’s quite uh amazing but
yeah they they they’re they’re telling
that they only train the new guys on
tannen because it’s easier to learn
only one product only one test only
than it is to learn the conventional
chemistries and
and all the adjustment and titration
needed to be successful
and i would say in my own team i i’ve
got people
that maybe some of you met at awt like
uh melanie
where she did started with us and she
she only knew
tannin in her life so if you ever ask
her about
her sulfite or polymer test she
doesn’t even know how to do it and and
she doesn’t know why she should do it
because
she prefer tannins that’s interesting
and i can’t agree more the best career
out there i don’t know why anybody would
do anything else besides water treatment
louie what’s one of your biggest success
stories uh i would say
first of uh it’s related you know to to
i think to start completely new in the
war treatment world is something that i
was not expecting maybe the
the conservative part and to be able to
gain confidence through that sector
and in line with that you know the first
pulp and paper mills
that we ever got into was uh cascade
maybe you know cascade they do uh over 4
billion
in turnover and they have over 14 000
employees so it’s quite a big one and
and their tagline is green by nature so
they were one of the first
maybe organization to ever push the
recycling part
and and reducing water so that was kind
of a natural fit for them to try us
and it was back in 2006 so we were only
a one-year company with three people
into it
so if you know a bit the business
usually they only work with
the the big war tweeters and even people
that are have 100 200 employees are too
small to go and pop in paper
and so we did make the cut we got a
first plant and then
we convinced them to get a second plant
and then by 2009 we were treating four
of their plants and
and one of them was doing 1 billion
pound of steam per year so
so really really large border and that
was
at that time in 2009 that we needed some
venture capital
to to sustain our growth so
we had the chance to sit down with the
owner of cascade that are called the
lemare brothers
and they’re really close to another
group
called it was called the la perea vero
or o vivo
later on and owned by laravel so
we sat down with them and i convinced
them to
to become shareholder of tgwt because
they could save on water and energy on
their side
and by investing on in our company they
can also
make money out of our growth so i would
say that’s maybe
my my best success story and now i’ve
been treating 12
or or plans of cascade and we’re still
putting new one
online every year so that’s that that’s
clearly a
one of my biggest success if someone
just
joined the podcast right now what is the
one
point that you want to make clear today
yeah we’ve been talking for uh
for the last uh uh half an hour or more
on tannen and i would say
more than than selling tannin the
the hard part about tannin or any new
thing is is
to how hard it is maybe to sell a new
technology so there’s always
really good upside but you need to grow
go through the first hurdles where uh
people will either not believe it
everyone’s afraid of change to a
different extent
so so tannin is is a a major change so
you you have to make sure that
if you ever do it you’re with them to
train the team
and and be next to them for the first
year and then after that probably
it will be easier and you’ll have less
time to spend and it’s the same thing
for me when we start a new war
treatment partner in u.s i make sure on
the first year that we have the open
line
that we can answer all the questions and
all the questions are good you know and
any any little fear is is good
to a word a talk and uh
throughout that also we build a platform
called close it
so so it’s helping all the calculations
are based on
awt the books from colin frain
uh the sparx circle calculation
uh in fact we’re also certifying it
uh having it certified by a third party
but it’s showing you clearly
when you put 10 in the border and you
increase cycles
all the difference area in a border room
where you’re going to see a change
and and when it’s going to happen and
usually that’s the base to a discussion
and
that’s the base to the support we can
give the first year
you’ve been a water treater for a while
so i i really want to ask this question
what’s the weirdest water treatment
story you have
yeah there there’s a couple of them but
let’s say a quick one would be
i was going to take a sample of a closed
loop in the
office building and that loop was never
treated before so we looked and looked
and there was no
no good spot to take a sample so
we had to open kind of an air bleed vent
at one point and for sure when you
manipulated
air vent it’s gonna send water quite
fast and quite far so i got droplets of
of that closed loop never been treated
on my forearms
and instantaneously i got some red rash
and some some little things growing on
my
my forearms so so that was quite freaky
yikes i’ve ruined shirts i’ve never had
anything grow on me so i guess that’s
why we always got to be careful
yeah kind of little bumps like
like really a skin reaction immediate
skin reaction to
what was in that loop and then of course
you treated it and
it’s it’s the best water on the planet
right
no we just run away from it because they
didn’t
really care so when we saw that we said
no
we’re not gonna if you’re not serious
about it
we’re not gonna work here understood
pick your battles well speaking of
picking battles the next battle that
we’ve gotta look through
is the lightning round so are you ready
to answer those questions
yes i am trace all right so these are
the same questions i ask of all my
guests
so the first question is if you could go
back in time and talk to your former
self on your first day as
a water trader what advice would you
give yourself
run away and don’t look back
no i think maybe on my side you know i’m
a war treater but i
also created the business at the same
time i would say maybe
the importance of of keeping the
innocence you know to face adversities
because if i knew that the war treatment
was so conservative
conventional and the people
even either customers or wartreader were
so conservative probably
i would have choose another path but
then joining
the industry and and going from step to
step
it was clearly not a straight line
success but it was
uh it was worth the trip so keeping that
let’s say innocence on thinking that
tomorrow will be
the best next day and uh and and that we
can you can face everything that’s
that’s i think a key key advice what are
the last few books that you’ve read
uh i can give you maybe two on business
and one
uh one maybe more leisure but uh
yeah i read and i keep coming back to it
scaling up uh not your podcast but the
book by vern
arnish you know on the rockefeller
habits
know that very well so uh so yeah so
we’re
doing the gazelle methodology for our
our business plan and our our strategic
plan
so we go back to that and i read this
kind of complimentary to it lately
another
book called playing to win i don’t know
if you ever read that
i’m not familiar with that one uh that
one was uh
written by a.g lafley who used to be the
former chairman
and ceo of proctor and gamble and roger
martin who’s
the dean at the rodman school of
management and they were working
together to make a lot of the
procter and gamble growth and success so
once i’ve read that i kind of combined
the knowledge of this with the vernar
nish
method because in playing to win for
sure they’re talking about
really large corporation
but maybe the the word are a bit better
and the the way to describe instead of
uh
big area audacious goals is you’re
playing to win
where do you play how would you win
what is your competition so it’s i think
the
the way to describe it it’s a little
easier for a team to
identify to their own reality
yeah i love that i love taking books and
kind of compounding them on each other
to fit what works for your company
that’s a great idea
and maybe just a fiction novel called
saga it was uh quite
fun giving
was given to me and and there’s a a bit
of uh
could be something uh in line with what
i have done in the business
just on the the moral of the the book
but it’s about uh
a team of screenwriter that that are
hired
for a night show and they have to book
that
that night show let’s say from three to
four in the morning and they
so they they take people that are not
really
known or identified as are sbrc
people and they take fire four of them
and they say yeah i wrote that tv show
we have to book that that spot in the
night and were paid for that
and so since they had no boundaries
and they have people were was not
expecting anything then they created the
one of the the largest tv show
in in the state so that so so that was
quite a
fun story to read when they make a movie
about your life
who plays louie that’s a good one i have
to
to think about it a bit but i would say
maybe you and mcgregor not just because
he has
he has a beard but yeah i think his uh
maybe
versatility he did sci-fi and i love
star wars and
and some more funny movie like
trainspotting
but also um i don’t know if you saw that
on
apple tv lately but uh it was his third
kind of documentary and it’s called a
long way up
so he’s taking his motorcycle from south
uh america up to los angeles
so and he’s sharing that trip with one
of his best friends i would say his love
of motorcycle
and friendship also would fit the
character great answer my last question
you now have the ability to talk to
anybody throughout history who to be
with and why
uh yeah i would say and if i go a little
further my first idea was richard
branson but he’s still alive
so he’s still in history so i can still
maybe try to make it happen but uh yeah
i like the fact that he’s
uh what he’s done with virgin the way he
started the company
and and how he kept the employee at the
core
of everything he he does and the respect
for its employee and customer also
and also i think keeping a fun
factor to everything he did that was
either serious or less serious so
i think that that would be it well i
think you’re doing a lot of those things
with
tannin thank you well
and thank you for coming on scaling up
h2o i think we all know a little bit
more
about tanning technologies thank you
trace and
again before leaving congratulations for
scaling up
you’re making all of us war tweeter more
knowledgeable
one podcast at a time
nation if you’ve ever had any experience
with
the people at tgwt
you know that they are some of the
friendliest people
on the planet you cannot call them
and not smile they’re amazing so
louis thanks for coming on scaling up
h2o once again
and thank you for sharing so much
information about
tannen as an industrial water treater we
need to know the different
options that we have available to us
because all of our customers have unique
needs when we have an arsenal
of different approaches that we can take
to achieve
industrial water treatment perfection or
as close as we can get to it
we are able to better meet that
customer’s
needs so once again just another
tool that we can put in that arsenal
nation as you have come to expect each
and every week james mcdonald is coming
on the podcast and he is challenging
us with a new challenge so once again
here is james mcdonald
hello scaling up nation the next james
is challenged as we grow as an
industrial water treatment professional
drop by drop is
question every chemical product you use
at each location to ensure
they are the best choice for the
application
did you inherit the chemical program
from the last person who managed your
water account
how do you know the correct chemicals
were chosen for the application
have circumstances changed such as a
change in makeup water quality
increase in heat load or new
metallurgies being added to the system
are there new chemical technologies that
better fit the need
it’s always better for you and the
customer to consider this first before
someone else comes in
and does it for you be sure to share
your experience on linkedin by tagging
it with hashtag jc21
and hashtag scaling scalinguph2o this is
james mcdonald
and i look forward to seeing what you
share
there you go another challenge each and
every week james is going to give us a
brand new
challenge as i’ve mentioned earlier on
the show if you have not
been keeping up don’t worry you can
always catch up
but here’s what i ask please share what
you’re doing with one of the hashtags
that james mentioned
hashtag jc21 and
hashtag scalinguph2o
when you do that you inspire other
people and folks
i really enjoy seeing how everybody is
doing
the challenge last week was a lot of fun
james challenged us to take apart a
chemical
dosing pump and hopefully put it back
together so it works
i know a lot of you did that and a lot
of you had questions about that
i urge you to use the valuable
vendors that we have in our industry we
are so fortunate to have some of the
best
water treatment equipment vendors out
there
that are servicing our industry so folks
if you have not reached out to them
and asked questions about the equipment
that you are
using you are missing a golden
opportunity
so if you don’t know who your
representative is
call your company ask who it is they
would love
to hear from you speaking of loving to
hear from you
i would love to hear what you
would like to hear on this show
one of my favorite television shows of
all time
was mike rose dirty jobs and if you
remember
he had in the very first season i think
enough for
eight or ten episodes where he was
actually coming up with the dirty jobs
after that he was out of material
and he begged at the end of every
episode
for the viewers to let him know what
dirty jobs were out there
i can’t remember how many seasons that
show was on but that show was on because
the
audience gave him ideas and i have to
tell you
that is a fantastic show if you haven’t
seen that
i’m pretty sure you can stream that on
whatever streaming service discovery has
now
but it is a great show and i am
following mike’s lead
it worked well for him it’s working well
for the scaling up nation
so if you have an idea if you have a
guest if you have something
you want me to talk about on scaling up
h2o don’t keep that to yourself
let me know what that is another thing i
will ask that you do
is that you tell your fellow water
treaters
about scaling up h2o
now let me tell you if there is somebody
that is not familiar
with podcasts and you know who they are
that’s okay you might have to help them
load a podcast player
and get them to subscribe to the show
i promise you if you do that they will
be forever
grateful and the more people we
get in the scaling up nation the better
the scaling up h2o podcast can serve
that nation folks i can’t wait to serve
you again
next week on a brand new episode of
scaling up
h2o
[Music]
scale up nation i’m gonna let you in on
a secret when i decided to start
the rising tide mastermind in january
of 2020 i was a little nervous because i
didn’t
know all of the things that were going
to happen because they hadn’t happened
yet
now being so far into each group
i am just so impressed with the members
who have joined
and i wanted to ask some of them what
were some of the things that they really
enjoyed
as a member of the rising tide
mastermind
trace does a really great job bringing
new material
um in a different format
throwing a little curveball at us um it
helps us
almost not to expect what’s coming but
then also we do have an agenda so
you kind of get the best of both worlds
i personally feel like i get
a multiple of value back for what i
invest in the rising tide
mastermind and i’m incredibly
grateful for the group i’m glad i
decided to commit to it
and i can’t foresee a day when i’m not
going to be a group like this
at least not anytime soon well gentlemen
thank you so much for
sharing that i have to tell you one of
my favorite things to do
is to try to turn things upside down
during a conversation
so we get all vantage points of
an issue i’ve been taught that by my
mentor
on how to do that in facilitating groups
that’s what chris mentioned earlier
that you just heard from and i tell you
that
is to make the member think a little bit
differently to see
the situation a little bit differently
so we can get a different
vantage point folks when we can change
our perspective of
how we see an issue that’s where major
change happens that’s where we can come
up
with ideas that we could have never had
before we have to make sure we’re
changing our minds about
what we thought we thought and then
we can make significant strides to not
only
solving that issue but even finding out
that that
issue was just a symptom of another
issue
i hope that this sounds like something
that you
want to become a part of and to do that
you just need to go
to scaling up h2o.com forward slash
mastermind to find out what you need to
do
to see if this is the right group for
you