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[Music]
today’s episode is proudly sponsored by
radical polymers
nation running a water treatment
business is hard dealing with your
suppliers shouldn’t be and when i deal
with the fine folks over at radical
polymers i have always felt like i have
had a partner they test things in the
environment that we are going to use
their products they also make sure that
if i have any questions that i get the
answer that i am looking for mike and
the fine folks over at radical polymers
answer the phones folks when was the
last time you actually talked with
somebody when you had a technical
support question well they make your
issues their issues and they get right
down to the problem they offer best in
class technologies with the first class
support that i just mentioned go to
scaling up h2o.com forward slash radical
to find out more
welcome to scaling up though podcast
where we scale up on knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems i’m trace
blackmore i’m hosting this podcast and
nation this was supposed to be our
halloween episode and i think the topics
we’re going to talk about probably do
have some halloween s qualities to them
last year i did something fun it was
episode 166
i actually read edgar allan poes the
raven on the air
that was by far one of the toughest
things that i have ever done on the
podcast making sure that i could do that
incredible
work of literature
justice making sure i got my inflections
right making sure that i increased my
tone and and gave some more emotion as i
was reading through it i’m sure if i did
it today i could probably improve on
that and there’s no probably about it i
could definitely improve on that but i
did that because it was a challenge and
i wanted to challenge myself and boy let
me tell you i definitely
did that
well we are up against a challenge today
and it is our raw material supply chain
issue and just a general supply chain
issue
so nation if you do not know let me
inform you there’s a whole
host of things going on right now that
affect how we get our water treatment
products from raw materials actually
being manufactured
to getting the raw materials shipped
once they’re manufactured to where we
need to get them to to blend our
products china has cut production of
phosphates by over 90 that of course is
not just going to affect our market but
every market around the world that uses
phosphonates add to that it’s harder and
harder and harder to get goods on time
because we’re having shipping issues
ships aren’t able to come in on the same
time frame that they used to
it’s taking longer to unpack those ships
it’s taking longer to get
the products off of the ships and to
where we need them and of course we have
a worker issue where we don’t have all
of the people working that we used to
in the workforce so add all that up
and that’s a halloween episode so i
don’t think i need to do anything scary
i think we’re living it right now but i
think scary is a word that is probably
appropriate if we don’t have proper
knowledge but if we have proper
knowledge we can make informed decisions
we may not like the decisions we have to
make but at least we know that we’ve got
information that’s backing
why we’re making the decisions that we
are trying to make so this is going to
be a pinks and blues episode where i am
answering your questions that you’ve
written into me and asked what do i do a
nation i received so many questions from
episode 221
that was aired just two weeks ago and
that was that episode that we aired out
of order we normally air an episode on
friday this one aired on a tuesday we
wanted to get the information out as
quickly as possible so you could do
something with that information well
when i did that the floodgates opened we
had a lot of questions around
what can i be doing proactively now to
make sure i can continue servicing my
customers and giving them the products
that allow me to do
my service so i thought instead of
answering all those questions one by one
i would bring an expert onto the podcast
no stranger of the podcast mike standish
of radicalpolymers i want to ask him
your question so you can hear firsthand
from him what he’s advising to his
customers and what he’s seen in the
marketplace so here is mike standish
answering your questions
i want to introduce mike standish of
radical polymers of so much going on
with questions about the supply chain
getting raw materials i wanted to bring
somebody on that that’s what they do day
after day so mike thank you so much for
coming on scaling up h2o and answering
some of our audience members questions
yeah thank you trace thanks for the
opportunity well let’s start off with uh
you’ve been on several episodes uh so i
think the scaling up nation knows who
you are so i’m going to forego that i’m
just going to get straight into some of
the listener questions the first one i
want to ask is
what are you seeing with the raw
materials supply chain right now
it’s pretty ugly i mean i i started in
this industry in 1986 and so 35 ish
years and i’ve number one like i think
everybody else has never seen anything
like this so
uh you know we’ve seen issues
periodically with polymers or molybdate
or what have you but never a situation
in my career at least where we see
everything all at once you know from
packaging totes and drums to essentially
every chemical that that we have it’s
kind of interesting to me because i
think there’s you know at least three
components to this one is demand i mean
at least here in the us in north america
we see demand is up for you know raw
materials are going into water treatment
but what we also see is some supply
issues uh which is number two uh so
we’ve seen you know where the hurricane
that you know went through uh houston
area in february it has really disrupted
supply chain and yeah we’re coming out
of that but those plants pretty well run
to demand and so you know when they’re
down several weeks it’s very very hard
for those plants to get caught up and
then of course you know the thing that’s
really jolting people at this point is
the reduction in
p4 which is the starting material to
make phosphonates out of china
so you know there’s been raw material
issues which is number two
and then you know number three is all
the logistics issues there’s really a
severe
constraint on ocean transit right now
and okay you might say well i buy from a
domestic supplier but it’s very very
likely that those domestic suppliers are
at least getting some of their raw
materials via imports from either asia
or europe and so i i can tell you i mean
where it used to take us our materials
are coming in from europe it might take
30 days from the time we place the order
until we start you know anticipating
shipment at our door it’s now 60 or 75
days and that’s due to port congestion
container availability and so on so
there’s you know it’s kind of a perfect
storm as a way i would you know describe
it at this point
mike what are some of your customers
what are other companies doing to
weather this storm
you know i think that and the what i
would say is the number one
recommendation i would have is that they
you know any of the customers or water
treaters out there you know work very
very closely with your vendors so work
with forecasting on your demands you
know work with those companies to kind
of navigate supply and work with those
companies to look at alternative
chemistry so
you know i think some of the bigger
things that people are doing is that
they’re you know providing better
forecasts to their uh suppliers they’re
working with the suppliers to qualify it
you know other raw materials reformulate
to give them
opportunities to you know
adjust in emergency situations on supply
and people are looking at new suppliers
as well
the one thing i would say about that is
that everybody’s pretty much in the same
boat so it’s one of those things where
the marketplace doesn’t necessarily have
excess availability of these materials
so it’s not one supplier over another
you mentioned alternative chemistries
and that’s what we’re going to talk
about next
you’ve done a lot of research to see
what chemistries we can replace
specifically with phosphonates since
we’re not getting phosphonates out of
china anytime soon
if i or somebody in the scalenum nation
called you up and said mike i just
cannot get
pbtc or hedp
what should i do
walk us through that
okay so i think you know the first thing
that you have to know is how these
materials function and what they do well
and what they don’t do well so in a very
quick capsule what i would say is that
most of our cooling water customers our
being you know the industry are mainly
using hedp and pbtc for calcium
carbonate control so that’s number one
number number two within that is okay
what functionality do they provide the
phosphonates typically are threshold
inhibitors which is basically extending
out the apparent solubility of calcium
carbonate beyond its normal limits and
they do that at very low dosages so sub
stoichiometric dosages
that’s the primary functionality of
phosphonates the tools that you have to
control uh calcium carbonate include
threshold inhibition they also include
crystal modification and they include
dispersion so polymers are a good
alternative to phosphonates they are
threshold inhibitors for calcium
carbonate they can be particularly
maleic based materials can be
exceptional crystal modifiers and uh
polymers are dispersants typically the
malay materials are not necessarily the
best dispersants
but you can work with your suppliers to
find that out so i think you know if you
kind of step back and look at the
functional tools you have threshold
inhibition which phosphonates are by far
the best
for calcium carbonate you have crystal
modification and you have dispersion
polymers do all three the caveat that
would tell to your listeners is is that
all polymers or for calcium carbonate
threshold inhibition keeping the
material in solution
are going to require higher dosages than
the phosphonate
and mike if we do replace our
phosphonates with a polymer can we now
assume that it’s going to have the same
threshold response or do we now need to
update our data sheets and train our
people into different water requirements
i’ll go into very technical gobbledygook
for a minute but so you know one way to
look at the limits of these materials is
by what’s called calcite saturation so
for calcium carbonate we’re going to
look at the limit for calcite saturation
that’s how many times solubility of
untreated material how many times over
and above that you can go when you treat
it
so for hedp
generally the rule out in the
marketplace is that the limit of
functionality for hedp is about 150
times calcite saturation and for pbtc
it’s about 200 to 225
typically some people can stretch it out
to 250 and say low temperature
application okay
the maleic based polymers can take you
out into that 200 to 250 times calcite
saturation
so you you can actually do better than
hedp with with the maleic rich materials
polymaleic types and approach what you
would see with pvtc you know in terms of
the limits of use the caveat there is
going to be dosage and what i would very
much recommend is that you don’t just
make you know the substitution blindly
you you really examine the waters the
limits in which you currently have with
the waters that you’re currently
treating you know work with your
supplier or with your internal team to
you know model those waters and kind of
make an educated decision of what the
approach needs to be for the replacement
i wouldn’t recommend just okay i take
out hedp and i plug in polymer you need
to not only look at the dosage but the
water chemistry and the operating
conditions to assure that you you know
understand where those limits are going
to be
mike if people are looking at their
warehouses and they see that they have
very limited phosphonates do you
recommend that they do a complete
replacement or maybe they stage down how
much phosphonates they’re putting in
their existing blends
yeah trace that’s a excellent question
and in fact i think a hundred percent
that’s what i would look at doing is
staging down or extending the level of
phosphonate that that you can use
there’s data to support that we have
data to support that i imagine other
vendors would have data to support that
i will tell you if you’re not in the
zero p application and we’re in normal
world where people can get all the raw
materials that they need and want
recommendation is always to pair the
phosphonates and the polymers together
you get complementary performance that
extends the overall range in which these
products can work and provide
performance so definitely the hybrid
approach where you’re extending the
phosphonate is a great approach until
you can’t do that any any further mike i
know everybody’s product is different
but what’s the lowest threshold that you
would want to see in any blend if they
were reducing the phosphonates and how
much polymoleic that they would want to
put in there if they just wanted to do
bare bones what’s the minimum threshold
that they would have to have in their
products
i’m going to say a typical dosage for a
stressed water and that’s where you’re
going to get to a calcite saturation of
around 200 times and and
you know just say rough
simple index of lsi of around point
eight to three if you’re in that i’m
going to want to have pretty heavy
dosage of of the polymoletic maybe 10 to
12 ppm active in the circulating water
now most people aren’t always operating
at the you know limit that that i was
just talking about so you know if you’re
in a more reasonable
kind of operating range where maybe your
circulating water ph is eight and a half
and your you know lsi is two or below
and you know calcite saturation of like
150 or something in that range you might
be able to get away with a you know
lower dosage maybe you know it’s
six to eight ppm active you know it’s
just a
very rough rule of thumb for our
products the way that i would prefer to
engage with customers on this is like
what i was saying before is let’s model
the water let’s look at it and make sure
we understand you know where the the
limits are
and mike you’ve done that for us and
it’s uh it’s great to know what the
theoreticals are we can have
conversations and we can eliminate
problems before we have to experience
them
yeah and i’d like to make another
comment polymers are not the only tool
that you have here it’s not the only
weapon
so you know
you might have this
and it might be a little more
complicated but let’s just take a
scenario where somebody normally has say
three ppm pbtc and you know five ppm
polymer and they’re circulating water
and now they’re they’ve decided okay
we’re gonna cut that back to extend out
our pbtc you know availability so we’re
gonna you know cut that down to 2 ppm
pbtc and we’re going to keep the polymer
maybe we’ll bump that up a little bit
you know the other kind of tools that
you have to work with here is ph control
you know ph control is your most
powerful weapon if you will against
calcium carbonate precipitation so you
know you can you can look at ph control
as circulating water you can look at
limiting cycles and
you know maybe you’re normally running
five cycles and you bump that down to
four to take some stress off the water
that not only takes stress off the water
chemistry but it takes stress off the
holding time as well and people have to
recognize that whether it’s phosphonates
or polymers they don’t prevent the
precipitation calcium carbonate they
delay it
so time is a big factor that people tend
to forget so if if we reduce holding
times a little bit we’ve also taken some
stress off of the polymer or the
additives that are going in to control
calcium carbonate well mike with
lowering concentration ratio we’re also
not allowing the product to concentrate
up so at what point do we need to be
worried that we might be wasting product
that we can’t get back
yeah i think that’s a great point you
know
i tend to be pretty conservative with
you know recommendations and dosages and
and i would say that in general we
probably all tend to over treat with
chemicals
but you know it’s almost better to do
that than than under treat and you know
have a
have a precipitation and scaling event
so i think that’s a tricky question that
is probably doesn’t have a real good
generic answer you know a broad answer
uh in this case i i really would be an
advocate where people can is to look at
things on a case-by-case basis and kind
of assess you know what what the pros
and cons and risks and rewards are yeah
no one ever said water treatment was
easy no no it’s not mike do you
anticipate eventually
if things don’t change we’re going to
see the same issues that we’re seeing
with phosphonates now happen with
polymers
i don’t think so at least in the north
american market we have to realize that
most all polymers that are supplied into
water treatment
in the north american market for scale
control so i’ve added about 10
qualifiers in there but you know most of
what we’re doing here in in north
america is produced by western suppliers
so we’re not really seeing the issue
there’s a number of domestic you know
manufacturers of of these types of
polymers there’s other western suppliers
there are
uh asian suppliers of these materials
too but for now
most of the polymer that’s being used in
our areas from domestic sources
i don’t see a big issue um you know we
are seeing some pricing pressures on raw
materials but right now there doesn’t
seem to be any supply issues and there’s
no kind of foreseeable
event for that that that would cause a
constraint on polymers the the
constraint that we saw earlier in the
year was based on the hurricane that
came through uh texas that affected
monomer uh
and i think we’re more or less out of
that there’s still some issues but we’re
kind of more or less out of that at this
point
so many people are doing legionella due
diligent programs specifically on
cooling towers which means they’re using
oxidizers most likely do we need to be
concerned if we’re changing chemistries
how the oxidizers are going to affect
our products
yes in general
i would certainly consult with the
supplier on that for sure
what i will tell you that in general
the polymers are not very susceptible to
oxidation so and that’s a broad
statement but it’s true for the types of
polymers that we use in you know scale
control and water treatment they’re not
very susceptible to oxidation in general
and in fact some products even some of
the malaic-based materials have very
exceptional stability and oxidizers
because they’re actually produced in a
severely oxidizing environment
so
yes ask your
supplier the question but in general
know that if you’re moving from
phosphonate to polymer the answer is
generally no
now we’ll say this
you know there’s a distinction between
the types of phosphonates and this is
important to your listening audience
trace
you know hedp and pbtc are
they don’t contain nitrogen in them
there’s this other class of phosphonates
like atmp dtmpa and so forth they’re
called aminophosphonates
someone was using hedp they can’t get it
but all of a sudden they say okay i can
get my hands on some atmp for instance
so phosphonate that contains nitrogen
you need to be very concerned about
oxidant stability of the nitrogen
containing phosphonates
or even some of the other phosphonates
that are typically used for corrosion
control that has scale control
properties like the hpa type materials
the
hydroxyphosphonoacetic acid those those
types of materials are very susceptible
to oxidation
so if you’re switching you know in that
direction
functionally you can do it but be aware
mike you and i and and a lot of others
are trying to get this information out
to as many people as we can but i have
no doubt somebody’s listening today and
it’s the first time they’ve ever heard
this information what advice do you have
for them
you know my advice is work closely with
your suppliers and your colleagues you
know out there
at least the independent water treatment
community
pre-tight knit group and you know talk
with other uh water treaters out there
talk with your suppliers i think the
very good news about all this is it’s
not you know the end of the world all
doom and gloom it’s going to require us
to make adjustments but we can still
treat water effectively i think that’s
the you know high level message on this
you’re just going to have to make some
adjustments and frankly i think there’s
a big opportunity in there for the
independent water treatment community
and the reason for that is because we
can respond reformulate react
communicate with our customer base much
much more you know readily and quickly
than you know many of our larger
competitors
mike this is almost like deja vu 15
years ago weren’t we talking about
molybdates we could just simply replace
our terms for phosphonates we were
having molybdate issues then can we
learn anything about how we got through
that and maybe anticipate how long it
will take based on the molybday crisis
uh yeah i think that there are a lot of
learnings from that you know we’ve
become very dependent upon imports and
you know i think that’s just the way
that you know things are in in this
world at this point i think you know a
major difference is is we probably
at least in open systems we didn’t
depend on molybdates as much as we do
phosphonates
we’re mainly using them for tracing as
opposed to you know scale control and
something that’s supercritical but you
know absolutely i think you know we
we’ve become dependent on that that’s
the way the world uh works now i think
you know probably the biggest learning
is always be prepared for alternatives
again we’re in uncharted waters at this
point
i don’t know about you know how long
it’s going to take to come out of this
because the molib date issue didn’t have
the other entanglements that we’re
seeing with transportation issues that
are really just as severe as as the
supply issues you know from the
countries of origin so i think you know
even if phosphonates today all of a
sudden were you know in abundant supply
we’re still going to be dealing with
these logistic issues that are really
creating severe
delays within the the supply chain
well i want to thank you mike again mike
standish radical polymers always a
wealth of knowledge thanks for answering
some questions for us mike
yeah thank you for the opportunity trace
nation mike just has a way of making
things that are very complex very simple
to understand he was one of my very
first guests when i first started this
podcast he was back on episode 14
so we were still learning how to do a
podcast and and all the things that go
with that back then on episode 14 but
mike was fantastic and he took
polymer chemistries and explained them
in a way
that will stick with you from now
through your entire career and allow you
to understand polymers so much better so
i highly recommend that you listen to
episode 14 to learn more about that i
also recommend that you take the advice
that mike just gave
reach out to your suppliers
if you are using somebody to blend your
products
reach out to them don’t assume that they
know all the things that are going on
share information with them that way you
all can collaborate on what the best
solution is for you and your company and
with that you know you’re making the
best decisions possible again as i said
at the top of the show you may not like
the decisions that you have to make but
at least you’ve got solid information
behind them now if you have not listened
to episode
221
i highly recommend that
we had four experts come on the show and
actually this was a webinar that we were
doing in conjunction with the
association of water technologies this
was a event that was cancelled
at the awt conference just a few short
weeks ago so we went ahead and picked
that up and aired that as a webinar and
then i took that webinar and i put it
out on the podcast so everybody in the
scaling up nation would have access to
that so we had jill cavano of scranton
associates join us mike standish of
radical polymers
gary garcia of masters company and john
zabrida of zybex
we got a lay of the land of exactly what
they were seeing and you get to hear
what advice that they have and what
their crystal balls are telling them
that they shared with us so again 221
highly recommend that you listen to that
episode but don’t just listen to it
share these episodes with each other
share them with people in your company
the more information that we can get out
there to our industry the better our
industry is going to survive a nation i
know that there is a tendency to just
think of yourself and i can get all of
this phosphonate i can hoard it whether
i need it or not and i’m telling you
that’s not how you get through something
like this i truly believe that if we
work together there is nothing that we
cannot endure
and i see this each and every week with
the rising tide mastermind
we are all working together we’re trying
to troubleshoot certain issues and
because we are working together because
we’re sharing information
we don’t have to do as heavy lifting
because everybody lifting definitely
lightens the load
so take a cue from the rising tide
mastermind and make sure that you are
being a good neighbor to all of your
water treaters and all of us water
treaters let’s make sure that we’re
sharing the information that we have so
we can make better decisions
nation before we sign off we always do
something to make sure we are getting
better and that is through the help of
james mcdonald so here’s a new james’s
challenge
[Music]
hello scaling up nation the next james
is challenged as we grow as an
industrial water treatment professional
drop by drop is
calculate boiler efficiency
there are several efficiencies around a
boiler but today’s challenge is
referring to the thermal efficiency how
much of the available heat energy going
into the system with the fuel is leaving
the system in the form of steam or hot
water
do your calculations match what you
expected
be sure to share your experience on
linkedin by tagging it with hashtag jc21
and hashtag scalinguph2o
this is james mcdonald and i look
forward to hearing what you share
thanks james nation remember find out
information so you can make good
decisions share that information so
others can make good decisions and then
collaborate with others so we can
ultimately help each other and i promise
if we do that we are going to shave
weeks if not months off of this issue so
we can hopefully get back to normal
happy halloween and have a great week
folks
[Music]
nation where do you want to go what is
the next step for you and how are you
going to get there those are tough
questions and they’re even tougher when
you’re trying to answer them on your own
that’s why i’ve created the rising tide
mastermind because you don’t have to be
on your own anymore we all take value
and you reaching your next level to
success and we will help you get there
go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash
mastermind to find out more
you