The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
welcome to scaling up h2o where we are
celebrating cooling wednesday happy
industrial water week everybody trace
blackmore here and as you can tell we
are smack dab in the middle of
celebrating industrial
water week folks it’s hump day
and hump day
wednesday is where we celebrate cooling
now on monday i asked you to stand in
front of your favorite water softener
and take a picture of yourself
yesterday i asked you to stand in front
of your favorite boiler and take a
picture of yourself well today
find your favorite cooling tower take a
picture of that
all those things please make sure you
hashtag all your posts with iw21
and scaling up h2o that’s how we can all
celebrate together and just blow this
holiday out of the water see what i did
there
nation today is all about cooling and
i’m not sure why this is
but i’ve always gravitated more towards
cooling than any other aspect of water
treatment now don’t get me wrong i
understand a bunch of areas of water
treatment i don’t think i’ll ever master
any of them but i am a student of all of
them but there’s just something about
cooling that i just connected with i
don’t know if that’s what my father
taught me first
if i saw a cooling tower before i saw a
boiler i don’t know why that is
but it is that way i’m curious do you
have a certain part of water treatment
that you gravitate more to
yesterday i told you a little bit about
the history of the boiler well today
we’re going to talk about the history of
air conditioning now the invention of
the air conditioner is credited to
willis carrier you heard that name
before
he invented that back in 1902
and his goal
was to control humidity in a printing
plant humidity was giving them problems
and he wanted to remove
that humidity in 1933
carrier air conditioning company of
america developed a belt-driven
condensing unit that became the model
for the modern air conditioning systems
that we have today folks i tell you
every industrial water week in and
pretty much every episode how much i
love our industry
but i get the privilege to treat the
oldest chiller in the atlanta area
it was made in the 40s it’s still going
strong today
and our products are proudly running
through that chiller history is so cool
being able to be part of history and
treating something that’s so old is just
such a privilege and when you think of
all the inventions that had to happen in
order for us to do what we do today it
is just so humbling
and the thing about history the more you
know about it the more you can
appreciate everything around you and
speaking of history today we’re going
back in the archives again
to episode 161
now that episode aired back on october
7th 2020 and you might remember that i
tried to stump you with some jeopardy
questions
well here they are let’s see if you can
get all of them right
so here is our wednesday installment of
industrial water treatment jeopardy
this measurement will raise one pound of
water one degree fahrenheit in one hour
[Music]
what is the british thermal unit or btu
the metric equivalent of that is the
calorie
the difference between the entering hot
water and leaving cold water in a
cooling tower is called this
[Music]
what is the cooling tower range
a chiller ton is how many btus
[Music]
what is 12
000 btus a chiller ton is 12 000 btus
where a tower ton
is 15 000 btus they add an extra 3 000
btus for the parasitic heat that the
chiller makes
water droplets that are lost to the
exhaust air are called this
[Music]
what is drift
and our last question for wednesday’s
water treatment jeopardy in terms of the
heat transfer coefficient the term u
is defined by this
[Music]
what is heat change across the heat
exchanger in btus per hour
without a doubt one of our favorite
things that we
do on industrial water week at least we
started last year
was we listened to a new episode of
detective
h2o well james the world is waiting for
the next new episode but while we’re
waiting we’re going to replay the
detective h2o series that we played last
year for cooling wednesday
[Music]
welcome to detective h2o the case of
misdiagnosis
the birds chirp cheerily as the sun
shone brightly through the streaked
office windows of herbert henry oxidane
pi cwt
detective h2o squinted out the window
uncomfortably
i don’t like it
everything is so bright it’s hard to see
what’s going on out there
i’ll take a good drizzle any day of the
week
the first clap of thunder and the black
mid 20th century phone both announced
themselves at the same time
[Music]
on the third ring the water detective
answer the phone detective h2o here the
best water treater this side of the ohio
solving water problems drop my drop what
you got
mr oxidane this is misty from widgets bs
you might not remember me but we met a
year ago when you inspected our water
tube boilers
detective h2o remembered misty all right
he couldn’t forget the sweet smell of
lemon verbena perfume
he had worked shoulder-to-shoulder with
her as they climbed through three water
tube boilers during the summer plant
shutdown
uh yes i remember you
inspection
water tube boilers
you passed i mean your boilers pass with
flying colors yes that was us
we need you again but this time for our
cooling towers we’re having problems
with our microbiological control feed
program
something is not up to snuff about it
but we don’t know what can you fit us
into your busy schedule mr oxidane
let me check my calendar
said detective h2o as he ran his finger
down the empty page
uh oh yes i happen to have an opening
this morning i’ll be there within the
hour will that work
of course mr oxidane i look forward to
seeing you in an hour
detective h2o cracked a crooked smile as
the rain started during his drive to
widgets bs in his old ford
he was looking forward to this visit
making his way beyond the guard shack he
headed straight to the powerhouse
misty downs were just inside the door
silhouetted by a burst of steam from a
recent boiler blow down to the drain
arms on her hips as she walked towards
him she exclaimed
mr oxidane i’m so happy you’re here
follow me
putting up no resistance the water
detective gladly obeyed when they
reached the water testing station misty
said
look at this mr oxidane the free
chlorine levels have taken a dive right
out of the blue
all of a sudden for the last three
shifts we don’t know what’s going on
we’ve turned up the bleach pumps but no
luck
now i’m smart enough to know there are
two sides to the oxidation coin
one side is demand
the other side is residual you can’t
have a free chlorine residual until
you’ve met demand
we’ve been racking our brain c
is there process contamination perhaps
oil leaking into the system causing an
increased demand i guess on the flip
side are those little microbiological
critters multiplying at such a rate that
we just can’t keep up with demand
we just don’t know mr oxidane we just
don’t know
the water detective scratched his chin
as he thought
let’s take this one step at a time misty
what you say is correct but let’s start
from the beginning can you give me a
sample of the cooling tower water we
need to run some tests
sure
replied misty a moment later she was
back with sample in hand
detective h2o started his barrage of
testing beginning with the free chlorine
test it was completely colorless but a
sharp well-trained eye did catch
something immediately
he moved on to the rest of the testing
including total hardness total
alkalinity connectivity ph and tracer
this is interesting can you take me to
the sodium hypochlorite feed station in
cooling tower basin please
of course have you found something mr
oxidane
maybe
when they arrived at the sodium
hypochlorite feed station the water
detective noted the pulsing of the
dosage pump in his tubing with a flooded
section priming did not appear to be an
issue at this point the pump was pumping
to beat the band
moving on to the cooling tower he noted
a fine white foam covering parts of the
sump water surface
some of it got caught up and flew out
the top fan as he took a peek inside the
cooling tower plenum area
detective h2o then led misty back to the
sodium hypochlorite feed pump which he
swiftly turned off
with her mouth open misty asked
why did you do that we don’t even have a
free chlorine residual and you’re
turning it off don’t we need more bleach
instead of less
the water detector took a moment to
enjoy the perplexed look on misty’s face
before revealing his hand a full house
a little crease formed between her eyes
when she was perplexed you do have a
good understanding of the basics of
oxidizing bioscience misty but i believe
you were blinded by the light on this
one let me show you
the water detective led her back to the
water testing station poured the cooling
tower water sample into a sample vial
and said
now watch what happens when i place the
free chlorine test region powder into
the sample
it’s just clear mr oxidane that means no
free chlorine
no watch again set detective h2o as he
rinsed and reported the sample
come closer
watch the very beginning right when the
reagent first touches the water sample
as misty and detective h2o stood cheek
to cheek watching the free chlorine test
reagent powder pillow drop into the
water sample it happened
did you see that misty
yes i did what does it mean
that flash of pink you saw as the free
chlorine test region powder hits the
water proves there actually is a free
chlorine residual in your cooling tower
what why how
did you notice the other tests i ran
before did you notice the colors some of
them changed the total alkalinity test
for instance
yes i did notice that one test in
particular turned different colors than
normal instead of a green and reddish
transition the colors were blue and
yellow
i just figured you were using a test i
hadn’t seen before
no misty it’s the same total alkalinity
regions almost every other water treater
uses did you notice the white foam on
top of the cooling tower when we took
our luck inside the plenum area
yes i thought it was from whatever the
contamination is what’s going on here mr
oxidane
regretfully bringing his consulting
services to a near close detective h2o
finally revealed his complete hand
it’s quite simple actually you’re over
feeding your sodium hypochlorite when
this happens it can bleach out the water
analysis tests giving suspect or
erroneous results the free chlorine
levels are so high that they are
bleaching out the free chlorine test
almost immediately but when you watch
closely as the test reagent powder hits
the water you can see a flash of pink
that’s the reagent doing its job just
before it fades from the high sodium
hypochlorite levels
also the total alkalinity tests turn
blue and yellow because the sodium
hypochlorite over feed
the tracer test was affected as well so
suspect you may be overfeeding your
inhibitor product too
lastly that white foam we saw on the
cooling tower water was once again from
the sodium hypochlorite overfeed
that’s why i turned off the oxidizing
biocide pump
seeing her disbelieving look the water
detective took the cooling tower water
sample prepared a dilution and ran the
free chlorine test again
a beautiful pink color bloomed in the
sample
see once we properly dilute the sample
the free chlorine residual is clear as
day smiling broadly misty gave the water
detective a big hug
[Music]
thank you mr oxidane or should i say
detective h2o you saved the day
for once the water detective was
speechless as his face turned the rosy
pink of her free chlorine test
[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
treater this side of the ohio solving
water problems drop by drop
nation i know you love detective h2o as
much as i do and we all thank james
mcdonald for that and another thing that
we can thank james mcdonald for
is the james’s many challenges that we
are doing all week long of course every
single week we do a james’s challenge
and those are 52 opportunities for us to
be 150 second better than we were the
previous week and to just think outside
of the box of things that we normally do
so again we did not shrink james so the
mini james’s challenge is not referring
to the size of james but the size of the
challenge so here is regular size james
in today’s mini james’s challenge
hello scaling up nation and happy
industrial water week today’s cooling
wednesday james’s mini challenge is
post a picture from inside a cooling
tower’s plenum area looking up
following all safety protocols of course
but grab a shot inside the cooling tower
looking up
people see the outside of cooling towers
all the time even if they don’t know
what they’re looking at
but not as many see inside the cooling
tower let’s show them
most of all be sure to share your
pictures on linkedin and 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
nation i was recently at a training
seminar and someone came up to me and
told me
how much episode 108 meant to them
that episode originally aired on october
19
2019 and this is where a listener called
in and asked about all the different
ways that we could feed cooling tower
product using a controller this is a
great episode for someone who’s just
starting out but it’s also a great
episode for somebody who has been in the
industry for some time and they need to
explain
feed to a customer
and they haven’t had that frame of
reference in a very long time
the way i really prefer feeding cooling
towers is based on demand and there’s
two ways to do that there’s how much
water is coming into the system and that
is my favorite way to do that if we lose
water for any reason
our controller is going to know about it
and then it is going to pump the proper
amount of product to replenish whatever
was lost
so that means if we have a leak if we’re
bleeding the system however we lose
water we’re going to see it via our
controller and the right amount of our
inhibitor is going into the system now
if we’re just using bleed and feed
well let’s say we have a leak in the
cooling tower
that controller is never going to see
concentrated up water because we’re
never concentrating the water up because
of that leak so it’s possible we never
feed product into that cooling tower
so water meters are one of my favorite
ways to feed product and water meters
are just a great thing to have on a
cooling tower a lot of municipalities
are giving credits for the amount of
water that’s being evaporated which is
about 90 percent of all the water that
comes into the cooling tower versus
going down the drain now here in atlanta
we have very old infrastructure and it
costs more to get rid of the water that
you bought than it did to buy it so it
really makes sense to take advantage of
that credit so we have water meters on
the incoming water on the makeup and we
have meters on the bleed our customers
then record those numbers and they’re
able to get a credit so check out if
your municipality will allow that to
happen because i got to tell you if you
are talking to a customer and they don’t
know about that and you now tell them
that they can save this money
it is way more money than you could ever
charge them for your water treatment
program so that is something you
definitely want to check out the only
way you can do that is with water meters
so a water meter that you would buy
would have some sort of contactor in it
and
after so many gallons it sends a pulse
back to the controller and the
controller is then set up via you to
know every time it gets a pulse it’s 10
gallons or 50 gallons or 100 gallons and
now you’ve done your math and you said
for every
so many gallons we’re going to energize
the pump relay to come on for a specific
amount of time and that’s going to
precisely treat all that new water that
came in so that is feeding based on
demand and that’s one of my favorite
ways to do that
back in may of 2020
one of our friends from avapco brett
alexander stopped by
to help the scaling up nation know more
about the cooling tower now one of the
items that he taught us is that not
everything we think is a cooling tower
is actually a cooling tower if you need
a refresher on that
listen to episodes 137 and 138 brett
tells you everything about the cooling
tower now here’s something brett taught
us about the cooling tower from episode
138 i’m sure you’re gonna enjoy
everybody’s familiar with the open
cooling towers uh set up right the large
water volume
connected use a plated frame heat
exchanger or a chiller um so we
mentioned last week about the closer
coolers and evaporative condensers with
the coils so i just wanted to touch on a
couple things to keep in mind when
treating those units
typically those units when they’re
outside you’ll see them with a spray
pump right by the unit and then it is
connected to a piping that goes up the
side of the unit that’s called a riser
pipe that’s what transports the water
out of the basin up to the top of the
unit and then sprays it over the coil
so
what we see a lot is people trying to
tap off that riser pipe to bring supply
water to a conductivity manifold or a
supply line to then inject some
chemicals into it i just want to give
you a heads up that those
riser pipes usually are very low
pressure so you might be only having two
to six psi of pressure when you are
tapping off of that
so depending on how far you’re trying to
bring that supply water to your water
treatment setup you might have issues
getting it back into the basin of the
unit
so you might require like a booster pump
depending on the size of the run so just
keep in mind the low pressure of that
riser pipe on closed circuit coolers and
evaporative condensers
nation i think you will agree on this
comment
every cooling tower should have
filtration they should come that way but
i know it’s more expensive to do that
and so many customers value engineer
filtration off of their cooling towers
and then they just want us to deal with
it well folks if all this crud is in the
system
and there’s this huge barrier of gunk at
the bottom of the cooling tower basin
how are we possibly going to treat it
and of course it doesn’t just stay in
the cooling tower basin
it goes everywhere it’s my hope that
someday every single cooling tower has
filtration on it so we can get all this
debris out of it and trust me we can do
our jobs a lot better when all that
debris
is absent
friend of show brian hayward joined us
back on august 2nd 2019 to tell us all
about filtration in episode 97.
the basic concept with
cooling towers i think as we all know is
that they pass water
across air large volumes of air
and it allows the water to evaporate and
cool the water from 95 degrees to 85
degrees or so so we have to put a lot of
air through water usually most often
contamination and cooling water systems
comes from the particles that are washed
out of the air
so any cooling tower is continually
washing dirt out of the air
and it depends on what environment
you’re in how bad that
deposition can be and it also depends on
a lot of that like things like cycles of
concentration that you maintain and
things like that but
generally a cooling tower needs to have
a filter to pull out particular in there
i mentioned earlier this week that i
just love going back and listening
to those previous episodes and thinking
about all the wonderful guests that
we’ve had
on this show i hear all the time that
members of the scaling up nation
re-listen to episodes all the time in
fact
some companies have certain episodes
that they make new hires listen to so
they can ask better questions when they
take them out in the field i absolutely
love that and that’s one of the reasons
that our sponsors love to sponsor this
show
because they know the members of the
scaling up nation will listen to these
episodes over and over again which also
means you’ll listen to their promotions
over and over again
now four years plus when i started this
show
i had no idea
that this show would be as popular as it
is i had no idea that you would want to
re-listen to these episodes and i had no
idea that companies would make these
episodes part of their training
curriculum i am so
humbled by that and with all of that
with getting to meet all of these people
that i wouldn’t had an opportunity to
meet if i didn’t have this show
i have truly enjoyed putting the show
together and it has become a passion of
mine and it’s so funny because five
years ago i don’t even think i knew what
a podcast was
it has become one of my passions i love
doing these episodes i love talking with
you the scaling up nation
and i love celebrating industrial water
week with all of you today is hump day
folks how are you going to celebrate
industrial water week cooling day and i
will talk with you tomorrow where we’re
going to celebrate wastewater have a
great wednesday folks
[Music]
scaling up nation i over the last couple
of days have just been talking about the
rising tide mastermind
just from my heart without any script
just telling you some things that i
think you should know about what the
rising tide mastermind is first if
you’re curious about it go to scaling up
h2o.com forward slash mastermind but
here’s what it is it’s people coming
together
it’s people creating relationships it’s
people
helping each other get better
as i told you in an earlier episode i
was the one that brought these people
together i created the rising tide
mastermind but what it has become is a
community a community of fantastic
people that we all enjoy being together
a couple of weeks ago we had our first
live event and i have to tell you it was
one of the highlights of my life
and i really enjoyed all the things we
did there and just being with that group
of people one of the most fantastic
things that comes out of the rising tide
mastermind is when we have an issue most
likely somebody else has that same issue
we don’t have to suffer that by ourself
and we don’t have to trial an error by
ourselves we can take lessons what other
people did they’ll say by all means
don’t do this because this will be the
result why don’t you try this and you’ll
get there a lot quicker than when i did
it on my first time folks how valuable
is that and i know if we can grow the
rising tide mastermind there is not an
issue out there that somebody hasn’t
experienced that can share with somebody
else that they don’t have to stumble
through if this sounds like something
you want to be a part of i’d love to
talk to you go to
scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind
[Music]
you