The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
welcome to scaling up h2o special
holiday edition scouting up nation trace
blackmore here and it is industrial
water week every industrial water
treaters favorite holiday an entire week
just for us and how are you
going to celebrate it whatever it is
make sure you take a picture of it and
you hashtag that picture
iw21
and scaling up h2o by putting those two
hashtags on there
everybody will be able to see how you
are celebrating and folks when we all do
that together we’re all coming together
as a scaling up nation as industrial
water treaters and we can really have a
lot of fun i tell you
in my career in some of the toughest
days that i’ve had
just knowing that i’m not alone doing
this and there are other people that are
out there that are doing the exact same
thing as i am has helped me
get through so many
difficult times and a lot of those
people i can call
and i can ask them questions on what i
should do next so by hashtagging iw21
and hashtagging scaling up h2o you will
see that you are not alone and we have
a whole bunch of people out there that
have chosen the same profession as you
did
industrial water treatment
well as i mentioned it is industrial
water week and we are going to hear from
the founding father himself
james mcdonald
welcome to the fourth annual industrial
water week
over the years so many of you have
celebrated what we do as a profession in
so many wonderful ways
others may still be asking how can i
celebrate industrial water week
number one celebrate in your mind and
heart
you know what you do take time to think
about pre-treatment boilers cooling
waste water and to reflect upon your
career
take time to recognize and perhaps even
boost your passion for what you do this
week
number two post something on social
media
post a picture of what you’re doing of
the industrial water equipment you’re
working with or even post a quick note
about your day your current challenges
or successes
number three
this is where the sky is the limit
people have made videos written articles
and blogs
served cakes shared memes and even
written songs
industrial water week is truly about you
in your career in this noble profession
of industrial water treatment
you decide
as we celebrate this fourth annual
industrial water week together across
the world i truly look forward to seeing
and hearing from each of you
happy industrial water week
james thank you for that and nation i
have to tell you james is always very
very clear to let all of us industrial
water traders know
that he might have been the one that
submitted all the official paperwork to
get industrial water week as an official
holiday but the ownership of industrial
water week it belongs to all of us
all of us industrial water treaters
now every year on scaling up h2o we do
something a little different to
celebrate but one thing we always do is
we bring you a brand new episode
each and every day this week so you can
celebrate in style industrial water week
now today is pre-treatment monday we are
going to take you on a tour through the
scaling up h2o archives
of industrial water weeks past we are
going to pull
some episodes that will remind you of
some things that we talked about maybe
these are some episodes that you haven’t
listened to in a while or maybe these
are some episodes that you’ve never
listened to
and now it’s piqued your interest and
you want to go back and listen to those
episodes so we’re going to do this a
little bit differently than we did last
year that we did the year before that we
did the year before that so i hope you
enjoy it and as i opened up the show
i want you to know that there are so
many industrial water treaters out there
this is how i want us to celebrate this
year so please help me in this endeavor
each and every day this week i want you
to take one minute to celebrate with the
entire water treatment community i’m
going to be asking you to take pictures
and then hashtag those to what i
mentioned before again that’s hashtag
iw21
and
scaling up h2o
you do that other people do that you’re
going to be able to enjoy those pictures
and see that we are part of a community
now today’s task is i want you to find
your favorite water softener and take a
picture next to
your favorite water softener or if you
have another favorite piece of
pre-treatment equipment by all means
feel free to take a picture of yourself
next to that
we’re going to start out with listening
to episode 50. episode 50 was originally
aired october 1st 2018.
the last thing that i will mention
is user error now we’re always going to
get blamed for everything but it may not
be us we had a customer that they saw
every time that that softener backwashed
we were wasting water and they didn’t
want to waste water and they’re a
company that’s very familiar if i told
you the name with being very
eco-conscious
i’m not going to tell you the name but
with this when we would leave after we
had things programmed they would
quadruple how long that softener would
stay in service before it went into
backwash so of course we would come
next time and if we were lucky we would
find it hard or what happened a lot of
times was we actually missed when it
regenerated and it was producing soft
water when we were there but just a week
before it wasn’t and then we were seeing
issues with our phosphate with our
alkalinity not being what they should
because it was going after that calcium
so look at programming issues now they
might be issues where we ourselves did
not program the unit properly or maybe
our program was changed a little bit of
advice i can give you is when you
program things and i never use what’s
set up from the factory because that’s
too generic for me i want to test my
water i want to make sure i know exactly
what’s in it and then i apply that to my
cubic feet of resin and how much
hardness that can hold and then i back
calculate from there and then that’s how
i program the unit and i write all that
stuff down so i know what i did
and a lot of times i’ll go through when
we have a problem and somebody has
changed that a lot of times they were
just looking at it and they hit the
wrong button and maybe they brought it
back to factory default or
really messed it up
next up is episode 107
part one that was aired october 7th on
2019. nation this was a hard week of
episodes for me back in 2019
i recorded 75 interviews over the awt
convention held in palm springs
that’s all i did during the show i
interviewed people and then at night
i edited those episodes i labeled them
and i uploaded them to my fantastic
audio engineer sean and then sean
had to put all of those together in a
cohesive product
send back to me to approve and then i
had to send everything to my staff where
they put everything together all the
behind the scenes stuff that you would
never think about that have to be done
in order to deliver this podcast each
and every week in fact some of you might
be thinking about it because we did an
episode back earlier this year was
episode 182 and that was everything
that we do to put out a podcast episode
well just imagine i was doing basically
what we do on a weekly basis every
single day
after attending the association of water
technologies convention
during the day folks i was up
pretty much till 4 00 a.m every night
putting these things together
i was exhausted when i got home from
this convention and then the following
week was industrial water week and you
enjoyed a brand new episode each and
every day for industrial water week in
2019
well here’s one of those episodes that i
was painstakingly working on while
everybody else was sleeping
nation i know you are celebrating
industrial water week and i am with the
gentleman that is responsible for
industrial water week james mcdonald cwt
how are you james i’m doing just fine
how are you trace i am doing a
wonderfully and of course we’re
recording this at the awt conference so
it’s a couple weeks before industrial
water week but you are responsible for
us having our own holiday and this is
the second time that we have celebrated
i want to know what kind of feedback
have you been getting on the fact that
we have a holiday now yes yes you know
across the world last year when i follow
hashtag industrial water week i find
people from everywhere who were
celebrating it companies of all size
large large and small nalco aqua phoenix
a wide range of companies and just
people have reached out to me thanking
me for well starting this it’s still
it’s not my holiday it’s our holiday but
it’s been very welcoming it really has
been i’ve heard the same thing too and
of course uh in honor of this incredible
holiday we are doing an episode each and
every day this week thank you so what
are some of the things that you think an
industrial water treater needs to know
in order to properly celebrate this
holiday yeah well i think what what they
need to
do is use this as an opportunity to grow
themselves use this as an opportunity to
share with with their colleagues what
what what they can do use this as an
opportunity to share with their clients
what what they what they can do and it
really is a well-rounded holiday and
that you make it what you want and so
that’s why there are days there is free
treatment monday boiler tuesday cooling
wednesday wastewater thursday and
careers friday so you can make it what
you want it to be based on your
expertise perhaps you’re a vendor who
only deals with cooling towers that’s
your focus well james thanks so much for
all you do not only for the awt but for
the entire industrial water treatment
community and thanks for getting us our
own holiday you’re welcome and thank you
to trace
last year something new we tried was
water treatment jeopardy we did that on
episode 159 that aired october 5th of
last year now you had an entire year to
study these questions so let’s see if
you can get the ones right that you
didn’t from last year here is a replay
of last year’s pre-treatment water
treatment jeopardy
so i thought something that we would add
to our celebration is a little
industrial water treatment jeopardy so
folks get your thinking caps on because
here come a few questions to see
how well you score
on this
monday’s topic pre-treatment
when samples are taken from a water
softener usually specific gravity over
the entire backwash cycle it is called
this
what is an illusion study
this is the most common name given to a
filter that uses a silica type substance
for its media
what is a sand filter
this is the device in the bottom of a
sand filter that keeps the sand from
leaving the vessel
what are the laterals
this is the volume of a solution passing
through a certain quantity of resin
within a given time
what is flow rate
the solution which emerges from an ion
exchange column is called this
what is effluent
this is what we call loss of resin
through abrasion
what is attrition
well folks i hope you enjoyed our first
installment of industrial water
treatment jeopardy
nation there’s no doubt about it we all
fell in love with detective h2o
james mcdonald has done so much for the
water treatment industry and one of his
gifts to us was he created a character
detective h2o and for many of you
last year on episode 159 it was the
first time you were ever introduced to
detective h2o well i’m sorry to say i
don’t have any new episodes of detective
h2o hint james the world is waiting we
love them we want them what can we do to
support you but what i can do is i can
replay the ones that he shared with us
last year and i know you’re gonna love
them as much as you did then
[Music]
welcome to detective h2o the case of
normalization
[Music]
rain flooded off his black umbrella as
herbert henry oxidane p.i cwt stepped
outside the six-story building where he
rented office space a few minutes before
the powerhouse chief operator howard
clyde muriatic had phoned
on the third ring the water detective
answered
detective h2o here the best water
treater this side of the ohio solving
water problems drop by drop what you got
detective h2o we need your smarts over
here at aardvark stamping incorporated
this is howard
we’ve got this reverse osmosis system my
crew records a lot of data on it
we just have no idea when to clean it
my guys are good with the books see lots
of practice from their extracurricular
activities if you know what i mean
we just don’t know what to do with this
ro data when should we be cleaning the
ro we’ve been guessing putting our
fingers in the air and just guessing
i’ve been meaning to come up to your
neck to the woods for a while now howard
i’ll start my old ford and be over as
fast as it can coast there it’s mostly
downhill crack open the checkbook and
save me some coffee
dodging the raindrops detected h2o
marched from the guard shack to the
powerhouse at aardvark stamping
incorporated
their three 100 000 pound per hour
coal-fired butter tube boilers lined the
main aisle with the operator room on the
far side
as he searched for howard the water
detective took a moment to look through
the log book
everything appeared to be in order with
regular testing and no notable events
with the water treatment equipment
during the last few weeks
detective h2o took a moment to chat with
the on-floor operator he found sitting
in front of the boilers with his feet
propped up
ox it’s been a while have you been
oh not bad barney not bad at all don’t
bother getting up how about you and
things around here
i’d complain but nobody would listen
things around here have been going fine
we finally rebuilt some of the valves on
software number two a few months ago but
she’d been eating her tires kicked for
an embarrassingly long time
sounds good is howard around he called
me about interpreting the ro data
howard’s around here somewhere i’ll call
him on the radio and have him meet you
at the ro
you’ll find log sheets to the right of
the units
detective h2o made his way to the ro
observing the flow rates pressures
connectivities percent recovery
temperature run times etc as he listened
to the unit run
it was filling up the permeate storage
tank and at first glance things looked
good
the data on the log sheets only went
back a month and didn’t show anything
obvious
a more thorough look at the data would
tell the real story though
detective h2o thanks for coming
as you can see the url is humming right
along and as you can see from that log
sheet you’re holding my crew is good at
keeping the books we completely guess
when to clean it though the permeate
flow rate is relatively constant but i
know these things do file and need
periodic cleaning is cleaning every
three months really necessary though or
should we clean more or less frequently
i’ve got no idea
i see your problem howard reverse
osmosis systems are a great technology
they can save a ton of money and boiler
fuel costs and water costs i’ve worked
with them for years but they can be
counter-intuitive when interpreting
their data changes in pressure
temperature dissolved solids percent
recoveries and so forth can make just
eyeballing the data impossible they can
work against each other to make what
seems like a good trend into a hidden
disaster
do you have the rest of the data
we should go back several months to see
what’s been going on
i’ve got better than that detective
i’ve been entering it into a spreadsheet
grab that log sheet hang in there and
we’ll put that data in too
when howard fired up his computer and
entered the most recent data a clear
story still did not show
look at this detective the permeate flow
rate has been steady for the past year
very steady i start getting nervous when
it runs for too long between cleanings
we clean this unit last october and then
late february but you wouldn’t know it
by looking at the permeate flow no
changes at all
are the membranes not fouling should i
stop cleaning i wouldn’t draw that
conclusion yet let’s see how variations
in variables such as pressure and
temperature affect the permeate flow
it’s called normalization and allows you
to do an apple’s apples comparison of
the system
with the membranes you have today
perform as well under the same
conditions as when they were installed
normalization uses mathematical tricks
to take the membranes back in time to
answer exactly that question
we’ve been comparing apples and oranges
up to this point
let’s dump your data into this
normalization spreadsheet i developed
based upon astm standards and advice
from membrane manufacturers
let’s see if this data sings like a
canary
[Music]
whipping out his hand-cranked laptop
from his briefcase detective h2o
transfer the ro data into his
normalization worksheet copied down his
equations and updated the graphs
then he whistled
look what we have here howard
well that’s a horse of a different color
detective
looks like you’ve taken the blinders off
yes
you see as a membrane fouls it takes
more pressure to force the water through
the membrane
counter-intuitively as temperatures
increase
water passes through the membrane more
easily
these and other factors can make
non-normalized data look just fine but
as you can see in this graph of
normalized permeate flow or npf it
doesn’t look fine at all
look at these increases in october in
late february those would be your
cleanings
rl cleaning should be done based upon
analysis of the data like we’re doing
here
some rules of thumb of when to clean is
when the normalized permeate flow
decreases by 10 to 15 percent
normalized pressure drop increases by 15
percent
and or normalized salt passage increases
10 percent
some membrane manufacturers may have
slightly different recommendations but
these are a good place to start
cleaning too frequently isn’t
necessarily good for the membranes just
like waiting too long can be bad for
them as well
this is great detective h2o how have we
been doing then
it looks like you probably waited too
long between cleanings when you did the
october cleaning but the membranes
appear to have recovered well then when
you cleaned again in late february you
probably cleaned a little too early
it may have gone another month or so
before the data would indicate the
optimal time to clean
how about now is it time to clean now
looking at this normalized data i’d say
things are actually holding steady
barney said you fixed up software number
two
was that sometime around or after the
last cleaning
you know now that i think about it yes
it was the beginning of march that unit
was prematurely hard for longer than i’m
willing to admit
but should we clean the arrow now it’s
been over three months going on four
shouldn’t we clean
i’d say no clean this auro based upon
the normalized data and the data says
the ro is not fouled enough to clean
i’ll leave you a copy of this
normalization spreadsheet to keep
logging your data into you can email it
to me periodically to take a glance over
we’ll make the decision together
that makes me feel a lot better the
budget is tight around here at aardvark
stamping incorporated the longer i can
go without buying new membranes the
better on the flip side i don’t want to
spend more on labor and chemicals for
oral cleaning than i have to either
this is a good plan detective h2o i’m
glad you’re on my side
i’m always on the side of wise water
decisions for both the customer and the
industrial water equipment
now where’s that coffee
[Music]
in the underbelly and printhouses of the
metropolis of waterville where the
boilers percolate and cooling towers fog
there is one man who works tirelessly to
end corrosion stop scale fight low-life
microbes and conserve water
that man is detective h2o best water
treated this side of the ohio solving
water problems drop by drop
nation i absolutely love going back
through these archives and just
revisiting what i was doing as i was
recording them all the things i was
going through different comments that
you all gave to me after you listened to
them and all the great people that i met
while i was making these episodes i sure
hope you’re enjoying it as much as i am
and something else i know that you are
absolutely enjoying is another gift that
james mcdonald has given us and that is
james’s challenge now each and every
week this year james mcdonald has been
giving us james’s challenge so at the
end of the year
we’ve had 52 little challenges
that we can complete that’s going to
make us a better industrial water
treater now for those of you that have
not kept up for every one of james’s
challenges it’s never too late
you can go back through listen to those
challenges and you can catch up remember
if you do make sure you hashtag
jc21 and hashtag
scalinguph2o we all love seeing how
you’re completing those challenges well
this week isn’t going to be any
different we’re going to add james’s
challenge to the celebration now these
are mini james’s challenges now james
isn’t shrinking in size james is the
same size the challenges are shrinking
in size so each and every day
this week you’re going to get a new
mini challenge and here’s james to
introduce monday’s challenge
hello scala guppy nation and happy
industrial water week as we celebrate
all that we do i’ll be posting some many
challenges this week
today’s pre-treatment monday james’s
mini challenge is
post a picture online of a software
valve assembly or rl membrane housings
you’re either bound to see one or the
other today or a picture stored away
somewhere
you can get artsy and take a picture at
a unique angle or close up or you can
just post what you have it doesn’t
matter
be sure to share your pictures on
linkedin or other social media by
tagging it with hashtag iw21
and hashtag scalinguph2o this is james
mcdonald and i look forward to seeing
what you share
[Music]
well i hope you can tell i absolutely
love celebrating industrial water week
with all of you
this is the most awesome holiday because
it’s our holiday we finally get to
celebrate the awesomeness that is
industrial water
treatment so it’s my hope that you are
celebrating right along with me i hope
to see those pictures of your favorite
softener or your favorite pre-treatment
piece of equipment and join me tomorrow
for a brand new episode on boiler
tuesday have a great industrial water
week folks
[Music]
nation i mentioned earlier about going
through some of these archived episodes
and just thinking about all the people
that i have met
well one of the things that i am just so
proud of i might have started but the
members of the rising tide mastermind
have really created the group to what it
is today
and it is amazing of the friendships
that we have it’s amazing of how we
encourage each other
it is amazing
of the topics that we talk about to make
sure we’re talking about the right
things and the things that we need the
most help with
folks again i might have started that
community but it is the members of the
community that just make that such an
impressive group now i don’t know if
this is the right group for you
i would like for you to investigate if
you’re an industrial water treater and
you are tired of going through life
alone go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind to read more about the
mastermind and if it sounds like
something that you are interested in
let’s schedule an interview between the
two of us where you can find out if the
rising tide mastermind is right for you
and the rising tide mastermind can find
out if you are right for it i’d love to
have that conversation because
after all life is all about
relationships
[Music]