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[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast for water treaties by water treaters where we’re scaling up on knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems hi everybody trace Blackmore here and do you know it’s been over 20 episodes
since you and I have spent some alone time together now I’ve had some great
guests on some very entertaining guests on some very informative guests that we’ve all learned a lot from but I got
to tell you I miss it just being you and me through your listening device so
that’s what we’re going to do today I’m going to open up the scaling-up mailbag
and I have selected questions that you’ve sent me and that’s all we’re
going to do today I’m gonna answer your questions that you’ve sent to me and hopefully get you the information that
you’ve been asking for so join me for an entire episode of me our first question
is can you please tell us more about LSI RSI and psi sure and this comes I am
guessing I had mentioned this on an earlier show and I just didn’t go deep
enough so here it goes what the heck is LSI RSI and psi well I think it’s
important to frame how they came to be and the very first one was LSI LSI is
the laun jaliyah stability index and wilford laundry
later in 1935-36 I think it was he created a way to predict if the water
was going to either precipitate calcium carbonate or it was going to dissolve
calcium carbonate to really get in the mindset of why he did this this is when
a lot of infrastructure in our country was being built and all over the world and all of these municipalities were
having issues with either their pipes dissolving or the pipes were getting
clogged up and they weren’t able to get the water to the customers to the
end-users and no one knew why so Longy leer figured out how can we
come up with an equation so we can figure out what’s going on with this and that’s exactly what he did
he figured out this equation so if you’re driving put your hands on ten and
two we’re gonna talk about some math for a second but I’m gonna have this equation on my show notes page but I
want to let you know what it is so it’s the starts off with the constant twelve point three minus the quantity of the
log of the calcium hardness plus the log of the ML kalenna T plus point zero two
times the temperature of the water in centigrade minus point zero one one
times the square root of the TDS so if you put all that together and then take
twelve point three and subtract what that equation was you are going to get a
number now that number is the saturation pH now what that means
it’s the pH at which we are not dissolving calcium carbonate and we’re
not depositing calcium carbonate now you know let’s go a little bit further then
we have LSI so Longy Lehr came up with that stability I’m sorry with that
saturation equation but then he made it a little bit simpler so us common folk
would understand exactly what it was talking about LSI the lingerie index is
the actual pH of the water – the answer to that equation that we just did and
it’s going to give you a number between negative 3 and positive 3 now 0 is
stating that where neither depositing or dissolving calcium carbonate and
anything above zero means that we’re going to deposit calcium carbonate
anything below zero we’re going to dissolve calcium carbonate now notice I
didn’t say the water was either scaling or the wall was corrosive I know a lot of us have
heard that in our careers that is not correct all water is corrosive we call water the
universal solvent with water and anything else given enough time water
will win so this is not an indices that tells us whether we are scaling or
corroding it’s telling us if we are either going to deposit or dissolve
calcium carbonate then if we move up we’ve got RSI and when I say move up I
don’t mean one’s better than the other it’s just up on my notes page RSI the R
is nurse stability index and then what that is is that’s two times the saturation pH so that long equation that
we did we’re going to multiply that by two and then we’re simply going to subtract the system pH now that scale is
between 1 and 12 6 is in the middle anything above 6 this time we’re going
to dissolve calcium carbonate and anything below 6 we’re gonna start the
positing calcium carbonate you know when it somebody wants their name on something they’ve got a they got to put
their own spin on it so that’s the spin that we have and then we have psi which
stands for either the pakora scaling index or the practical scaling index now
Paul poq aureus I hope you are a member of the scaling up nation because when I
teach the math portion for a WT when people are getting ready to either take
their certified water technologist test or they just want to learn some more information I go through math in a way
that I explain every single equation that’s up there except for this one so
here’s what the PSI says it’s two times the saturation pH just like RSI but now
instead of subtracting the system pH we’re going to take the pH of
equilibrium and this is the equation that I don’t know where it was derived
so it is one point four six five times
the log of the M alkalinity you get that number and then you add four point five
four – that number that you got and you
get a number that’s between 1 and 12 just like RSI and we’re gonna read it
just like RSI the question I always get
is which one is better and I know I answered this on a previous show but
every time I talk about this people always want to know which one is better folks they’re all the same they might
have a little bit of urgency on how much
it’s scaling if you listen to a previous episode I do a spot-on impression of
Colin Frayn and he tells us that if once if LSI is scaling then RSI is going to tell us
it’s really scaling and PSI is going to tell us it’s really really scaling so go back to that previous episode and hear
my spot-on impression of Colin frame but that’s what he says and I like that definition so I stole that from Colin
thank you very much for that and that is LSI RSI and psi there are very different
ways that we can do that now if you have a graphing calculator or scientific
calculator you can put those numbers in there and you got to do it in the right
order and you can do this longhand you can do it on your calculator but most of us are either accustom to the 1960s
technology which is the slide rule and if you’ve ever been to any AWT function you’ve gotten one of those slide rules
or you might have come into this century and downloaded an app for that and
there’s a ton of apps out there you might have written your own excel equation how do you write your excel
equation well you’re gonna take that formulation that I just gave you that calculation that I get just gave you and
you’re gonna plug it in to excel and then have various cells where you can chart your information that’s what
somebody did when they created the app and made it very easy for you that’s
what it is I hope that makes a little bit more sense and I hope that you can start using
either LSI RSI or psi to give you a better look of what’s going on in your
system when there are no products in the system now keep in mind it does not take
an account that you have corrosion and scale products in there corrosion products aren’t going to do us much good
here but we’re putting products in there that are going to extend a threshold of when things are going to come out of
solution and that does not come into play in that equation so why use it well
it gives us a worser case scenario and most people use this for product
selection if I run the LSI or RSI or psi
on the concentrated up water I can then see what I can expect and then that will
allow me to find a better product in my line to handle what’s going on with that
water this listener writes trace thanks for all that you do I really want to go
to AWT functions but my boss is not a member how do I get to go to these AWT
functions not being a member and how do I convince my boss to become a member of
the Association Water Technologies I’ve gotta say that’s unfortunate of being a
past president of the Association of Water Technologies being involved on the educational committee and just being a
member of a WT for so many years I can’t imagine not being a member of it and the
only reason that I can think that your boss doesn’t see value is because nobody
sat down with him and told him business owner to business owner all the great
things that you get from a WT how it allows us to make our business better
because all of us are giving information to the organization based on mistakes
that we’ve made things that we’ve learned out in the field that we’ve learned in business and we’re trying to
make the entire industry why wouldn’t you want to be a member of
that so III don’t think the right person has ever spoken with your boss and by
all means you know invite them to email me I’m happy to be an advocate for AWT
but as far as you not being able to go to technical trainings and conventions
and things like that because you’re not a member that’s not actually true it’s just gonna cost you more money to go
because you’re not a member so if you go on a WTO org you can go to any of the
events we’re gonna have some technical training events coming up early next year you are more than welcome to attend
that it’s just the non-member price probably will pay for your membership so
you might be able to get him to decide it’s a good idea for that AWT dot org
we’ll get you to the website and then as far as the tabs up top the very first
one is membership it will tell you the benefits of membership and it will tell you there’s an application on there it
tells you absolutely everything that you need to do again I just can’t imagine as
a business owner so I’m in the same position as your boss and if I was I
don’t even know how much it is it’s it’s not a thousand bucks it’s lower than that I’m paying much more for
organizations that were getting far less from but I’d do it so our company has
representation at those AWT just gives me so much information I would be at
such a loss if I did not have that membership so I don’t think he has the right information I don’t necessarily
think he’s cheap I just don’t think he sees the benefit from that so hopefully
this helps like I said if I can help personally let me know contact a WT Angela Pike is the Membership Director
there and she can she can definitely help you with some information with that my advice would be don’t give up sit
down with them and say what you’re getting from this show and what you want to continue to get and why you know if I
go to a training like this this is going to help me become a better water treater
and then I can bring that information back to this office
and I would like to teach one or two or three of the things that I’ve learned there so we all get value from it and
start maybe selling it in that way once you do that he’s gonna think wow I’m never not gonna
send this person to wherever they want to go again because they really take it seriously it’s not just the fact that
they want me to throw money at something I’m getting value for that so hopefully that helps don’t give up and let me know
how I can help this next person writes in trace thanks so much for sharing the
tip of adding one drop of EDTA first to the hardness test kit when you have iron
issues says they’ve used that a lot and they want to know do I have any other
tips like that well first off you’re welcome that was something that it
wasn’t mine I learned that from Frank leckrone and he learned that because all
these people were calling in and saying that his test kit wasn’t working properly so they figured out what the
actual issue was and went back in their lab and came up with this technique and
he shared that at AWT a previous question was their boss didn’t see value
in AWT well if you didn’t go to that AWT you wouldn’t have gotten that value out of it and I’ve received I received a
letter saying that that’s helped somebody out alright so I’m back on another question when I should be on this question the question is can I
share other tips and I certainly can oh I’m trying to think of something that I
can share with you but while I’m thinking so I’m stalling for time I am
going to advise you to get to know your tests and the best way to do that is to
look at your procedures and study your interferences now you might not have
information on your company’s procedures because maybe somebody just rewrote procedures to make it easy for you to
read out in the field so I want you to go to WWF comm ford
slash water analysis handbook sorry it’s it’s w a h so Forte’s last w a h and if
you search hawk water analysis handbook that will come up and every test that
Hawke makes and they’re full procedures are listed there and what I would do is
pick out the ones now you’ll have to basically you select something and it gives you a PDF to download you’re going
to download all the PDFs of the tests that you have and the first thing you’re going to notice is there’s going to be a
procedure there and it’s probably different from what you’re running don’t worry about that if it’s the same type
of test it might just be using hoc reagents and not Taylor reagents or not
another company’s reagents you can still use that and and the great thing about
those PDFs is in the back it tells you every single interference that they know
of that can create a problem with your test look at those and then go back and
figure out is one of those in my system and then how can I get rid of it so
here’s the tip that I’ll give you when you find one of those how are you going to get rid of it well you can’t get it
out of the system but you can figure out how much is an issue it normally says
you know iron might be three parts per million or above so if it’s that and
you’ve got more than that you can dilute the sample and from that sample you
you’re now testing less of the actual water that’s that’s creating the issue
and you can run your tests hopefully without any problems then you just have to remember whatever you diluted it to
you’ve got to add that back so if you had a if it was normally a 20 mil sample
and you couldn’t run it because of the interference whatever the interference was so you brought it up to
you know half-and-half so 10 di water 10 system water and tested it then whatever
you tested for you’d have to you’d have to multiply back by 2 because you’re only testing half of what’s really there
I will say be careful with this if you are sloppy on your procedures and your
measurements this is where your margin of error is going to multiply greatly
because if I’m sloppy with my measurements I don’t have half in half and now I’m not only am i off on my
actual test because my measurements are off but now I’m multiplying that whatever that multiplier is that’s gonna
double or triple or whatever that error was so hopefully that is enough I’m sort
of at a blank I know I’ve got a lot of stuff that I do I just can’t think of anything so I tell you what if you write
back in and ask me for a specific test that you’re having issues with I’ll try
to answer that on the air and don’t give you that one next question is trace what
should I tell the customer to do prior to a boiler inspection so for those of you that are responsible for the water
treatment for a boilers probably minimum every single year somebody is coming in
and they’re inspecting the internals and all of the safety equipment on the
outside of the boiler itself in a lot of ways we look at this as our report card
on how we are doing for the past year I would like for us to start looking at it
as how the entire team is doing for this boiler for the past year because if
we’re doing monthly servicing there’s somebody else that’s there every single day and hopefully we’re working together
to make sure we’re getting an A on that report card you can’t have one side without the other
so it is collective how well that we are doing please educate your customers to
this and hopefully if they’re not working with you that might be a little motivation that allows them to more
readily want to work with you the question specifically says what do I need to tell the customer do in
preparation for this so normally what I do is I have them
either double or quadruple the blow down depending on what’s going on
with the year the goal with that because we want to get all that sludge that’s in
the bottom of the boiler out before we get all the water out of the boiler and
typically I tell them not to worry so much about the conductivity that they’re
concentrating on blow downs I would probably also make a slight adjustment
to all of my chemistry’s knowing that instead of holding a specific
conductivity we are now going to go away below that and make sure that the boiler is protected during I like to do this
about a week to three days minimum before they’re actually gonna shut the boiler down I also add extra polymer
during this process so it will help get all of that stuff through the blowdown
line and and out of the boiler that’s probably the big thing that I’ll do with that and of course make sure always that
they have soft water nothing new that you wouldn’t always do I’m just trying to think of some other items that I can
give you for advice when they actually shut the boiler down they need to
prepare for that and so many times they don’t shut it down in time for it to
cool and then they expect the boiler inspector or even worse me to get in
this steam and hot boiler and one of the things I’m not going to talk about the boiler inspection itself but one of the
things I like to use during a boiler inspection is a camera and I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to use a camera in
the presence of steam but you are not getting any pictures so just make sure
that they’re given enough time to allow that boiler to cool and then I’ve also
seen again not talking too much about the inspection but I’ve seen they’ve taken something down they’ve looked
inside maybe the maybe it wasn’t inspected but having to replace something and then immediately they introduce cold water to
a hot boiler please don’t do that that greatly stresses the metal and you can
have some really major issues with the boiler if you were to do that now when
you’re going to put the boiler back online you need to calculate how much water is going back into the boiler and
all of your products out there have a dosage rate and what you’re going to do is if it’s so many hundred gallons
you’re going to figure out what the dosage rate is for that so many hundred gallons and actually put that directly
just right on top of the boiler and bring it up a lot of people will assume
that their chemical feed pumps are gonna bring that boiler back up to where it needs to go and those chemical feed
pumps they are there to maintain what is there so you’ve once you’re done with the boiler inspection you’re filling it
back up the water you’ve got to get it up to what you want to maintain I hope that answers your question you
specifically asked what you need to tell the customer to reiterate increase your blowdown you’re probably going to
increase the polymer tell them not to worry so much about holding a specific conductivity instead of doing their
normal blowdowns they’re gonna double or triple or quadruple what those blow downs are and then make sure that they
have plenty of time to cool that boiler before anybody has to get inside with it
the next question is do I really need to get my CWT or lead GA there’s some more
in this question they’re going in to validate the reasons that they don’t need that but pretty much it’s you know
I’ve been getting by with it so far so why do I need it now my answer is no you
don’t need to get your CWT or any certification but my question back at you is why wouldn’t you folks you have
decided to be in a particular industry now that industry just happens to be water treatment but whatever it is why
would you want to be mediocre and you can be a very good water treater a very good technician at whatever it is that
you’re doing without certification but think about what certification is
think about what this show is the whole reason that I am doing this show is to
give you that little extra push to learn something new to do something a little
bit better and I feel that the CW T for the water treatment industry is the
validation that you’ve done that that you are better than other water treaters
out there because you’ve done more than they have to prove to your customers
your employers and yourself that you got this designation now just
because you’re a CWT does not mean you stop learning but like I said it is a
it’s a way that you can prove to yourself that you learned baseline
information among some of the top peers in the organization as far as the li GA
li GA has very little to do with water treatment now there’s some in there but
there’s not a lot of it however the United States Green Building Council is
putting I don’t want to say standards because they’re not standards but they’re they’re letting their members
know that we as water treaters need to do certain things in order for them to
get verified certified to get the points on there wherever their equipment is
whether it’s a building or whatever it is when we want to be at that table for conversation and if we have a bunch of
skilled water treaters that are available to have that conversation with our customers and we can speak the same
language that everybody at that table is because we’re talking about getting this building LEED certified now it has value
for everybody that’s involved and the re other reason that I think that getting
your Li GA is a good idea is because many of us are out of practice with studying it’s been a while since we’ve
been in school it’s been a while since we’ve taken a standardized test the Li GA you will have to study
for because it’s got a lot of stuff outside a water-treatment but it’s not a difficult study and it gives you a
credential that you can get relatively quickly that you can put on your business card right then and it’s going
to give you the confidence to go ahead and start studying for your certified water technologist examination and
you’re gonna feel good because you say hey I got this Li GA now I know what to
do I’m back in the habit and I am confident that if I put my mind to it I can get this CWT so I hope the new
question is is why wouldn’t I want to get my CWT or my li GA and by the way on
my show notes page I’ll put links to both of those if you want to learn more about those and I want to thank that
listener for that question this question reads trace when you came up and worked with our company you said we needed to
start running copper and iron on closed loops and cooling towers why let’s back
up a little bit so I’m not gonna tell you the name of the company or who wrote this well one of my favorite things to
do is to work with other water treaters so I can learn from them and they can learn from me and hopefully whatever
issue that they are having we can overcome that and everybody’s getting better in this specific instance this
customer hired me to come up and they’re a fellow aw team member to look at their
system that they had for this one customer and they did it with the customer the customer was was in in full
light of everything that we were doing and I was to go in and try to steal the business from them now not not really
but if just think if I was going after another account that somebody else had
that wasn’t me I would be looking for all these things that I would do better so I could show that I knew more than
the other company that actually had the business so that was the arrangement we had we went into this customer site and
I just started doing my survey and the other company was there and I was asking
them questions of course so I could get some more information and I found and probably a dozen things that I would
have done differently or more importantly they were actually falling short on and I don’t think that they
were I know for a fact that they were not saying we’re just not gonna do this stuff this accounts not worth it they’ve
had it for so long they’ve just it’s the same stuff month after month after month and when
you start seeing problems over and over and over again you kind of become immune to him you just don’t see him anymore so
that was the big thing that we had here anyway I took all the information that I had and then we went back to their place
of business we looked at service reports and various things and like I said I found about twelve items that they could
improve on and then we work together to figure out how they could improve on it
and how they would know when the improvement was made and I got to tell you that’s that’s my favorite thing to
do when I can do what I do best and and find problems and troubleshoot problems
and teach along the way I absolutely love doing that the person in this
company was one of the technicians and he wasn’t involved in this entire process he was just involved when I was
doing training with this company basic water treatment items and then I made
some suggestions based on what I found at this and a couple of other accounts of what they could be doing better and
one of those suggestions was to start testing copper and iron in closed loops
and cooling towers so now you have the framework of how this question was posed
to me and the reason was I was not able to look at their service reports and
confirm or prove that we were or not having issues now when I ran my own
tests I was instantly able to find certain issues because I knew what to look for and basically I was just on a
scavenger hunt at that time it are things working now I’m gonna go test that and I’m gonna run various tests I’m
gonna talk to people I’m gonna look at things and and then I’m gonna get verification of whether it is
it is not and we were having some issues with some higher-than-normal corrosion
and we weren’t running corrosion coupons and we weren’t running copper and we weren’t running iron so this show isn’t
our this question isn’t about corrosion coupons everybody knows how I feel about that if you’re not running corrosion
coupons in your system then you’re treating your chiller or your heat exchanger or whatever piece of metal is
in there as your corrosion coupons and by the time that tells you something’s a problem you’ve really got a problem so
corrosion coupons are a little bit more proactive copper and iron ore what’s making up the parts of that system if
we’re doing our job well the corrosion inhibitor should be protecting that
copper and that iron if it’s not we’re going to start seeing more copper and iron in the system and that’s just a
proactive measure that something is not right but at least we know we need to
start to look for one so let’s say we have a high copper or high iron the
first thing that I would do is I would look and see what our inhibitor levels are if they were low that might confirm
why are those other copper and iron numbers were high I say everything else
in the entire system was fine I would then go and look at the raw water and
see what the copper and iron or both or either of those are in the system and
then if they were high in the raw water well of course they’re gonna be high in the cooling tower but so many of us
don’t take enough information from the raw water and keep in mind I’m not I’m
not proposing that you run copper and iron all the time on your raw water unless your company has you do that but
the fact that we had a problem on this cooling tower we now went looking for where it was coming from and in this
instance we actually had an issue with high iron was coming in from the make up
water and then it was going into the cooling tower and that was actually creating a problem that all the chemical
in the world could not have solve what we had to do was fix this issue and in this case it was actually
some bad piping and they were having it in some other places of the pipe I’m sorry they were having it in other areas
of the building that were creating some other issues so the fact that we found
this they were able to do some mechanical work solve the issue and it
not only solved our issue it solved the issue of one of their tenants and they
were ecstatic so that’s why I say run copper run iron in the systems that
you’re treating and that way you know if you’re inhibitors working by the way that’s why you’re testing for your inhibitor a lot of people think they
test inhibitor to see how much inhibitor is in the system to protect for
corrosion and that’s kind of true but not really it’s how much extra inhibitors in the system so if we have a
residual we’re going to assume that all the other inhibitor has attached its way
through this piping system that are through to the metal and now that’s added corrosion protection throughout
the entire system now what we’re testing is not that what we are testing for is
the extra residual because eventually that stuff’s going to get used up its
going to get scraped off the system and there has to be so much in the water available to go back in and repair that
gouge of corrosion protection if you will so that’s what we’re actually testing for so I hope this question gets
you thinking you know what am i doing to actually validate am I really doing my
job and how do I know that I’m protecting this system what is Rho R P
so we all have that controller out there maybe we’re not very familiar with what
the controller does but our boss said hey this is your account go service it and we inherited it we have no idea what
it is but we know there’s an extra probe on that controller and there’s a number
that looks right at us that says ORP what does that mean well our P stands
for oxidation reduction potential now it should really be oxidation slash
reduction potential now oxidation if I can take you back to chemistry class is the loss of electrons and reduction is
the gain of electrons normally we will find our RP on a controller where we
have a cooling tower where we are feeding oxidizing biocides and it is simply just telling us how much
oxidizing biocide do we have in that system and is it enough for our program
to effectively kill this stuff that’s growing into the cooling tower now the
higher the number the more oxidizing biocides we have the lower the number the less oxidizing biocides
that we have normally in a cooling tower situation and I say normally there’s no
steadfast this is right this is wrong we want to measure o RP above 200 and 250
or so in a cooling tower to give us enough oxidizing biocides in the system
when we get an O RP reading is simply a reading of millivolts based on that
oxidizing biocide in the substance that we’re measuring in this case the cooling tower water now normally above 200 is
where we are going to start with setting that o RP and that gives us a small
amount of oxidizing biocide to put in that controller now how do you know how
do you check it well what you’re going to do is you’re going to measure either your free or total chlorine whatever
your company tells you to do and make sure you have enough in that system make sure that the system is able to hold
that amount now keep in mind you’re gonna have a lower amount when you’re feeding something off of RP because
that’s continual on another system where you’re feeding based on time however you
feed it however often you feed it you’re going to put more in because you’re
going to let that slowly dissipate out until the next feed well that’s not our p or p in my opinion is a better way to
feed that because we have a lower slower amount that’s going to be less aggressive towards the system metal
oxidizing you know it’s gonna oxidize whatever it is we want it to oxidate all the microbial
stuff in the system but it’s also gonna oxidize all that metal in the system too
we can put a smaller amount and hold that smaller amount that’s what Oh our P
does so whatever your company’s recommendation is the parts per million
total chlorine are free chlorine measure that and see if you can hold that in the
very beginning it’s going to be very difficult for you to clean up the system on a low amount of oxidizing biocide my
advice is you don’t rely on Ord to clean up a dirty system you do that manually
and then you maintain that through ORP now ORP is a measure of the parts per
million of chlorine or whatever it is you that you’re using the pH and I think
there’s also something in the equation that deals with temperature as well I can’t remember the actual equation but
the only way to verify that is to see what the millivolts reading is that’s that ORP number and then do your test to
see if you have enough residual oxidizer in the system and if it’s holding that
now a lot of people will start to calibrate their controllers and make
sure that the ORP is absolutely exact and you are more than welcome to do this however I have not found value in it I
really don’t care what the reading is on the controller what I care is that it’s holding constant if I want to point for
free chlorine in the system and it can hold that I could care less if it’s doing it 200 millivolts or if it’s doing
it at 400 millivolts I just want to make sure that it can hold it now if it’s all
over the map you might need to calibrate that or you might actually need to replace the probe but if that’s not an
issue don’t waste your time with it move on to something else so I hope that brings a little bit of sense and what
ORP actually is I want to try to find I know I’ve got some charts in my archives
that show on a graph shows how much parts-per-million and this deals with chlorine what the pH is
and what the expected millivolt reading is so you can try to determine either
what the millivolt reading is based on those two variables or look and see what the free chlorine parts-per-million
should be based on the millivolts or the pH I haven’t found those to be horribly
accurate but they’re close and they’re mostly from the swimming pool industry so I’ll try to throw those up on my show
notes page but I hope now you’re armed with a little bit more information on what Oh RP is this next listener writes
when are you gonna have Marc Lewis on can you believe that Marc Lewis wrote this question now I say I don’t tell who
writes these questions but this once again is Mark Lewis riding in and asking when he’s going to be on the show now
I’m picking on Marc a little bit we’re very good friends and the neat thing about Mark Lewis is we are always
challenging each other to be better water treaters and when I have a
question I’ll call him he’ll call me and we’ll try to stump each other all the
time so that’s that’s why I like picking on Marc and he picks on me on his own right when we get together so I don’t
feel bad about that at all I will have Marc Lewis on in a very soon episode so
I have no idea what that’s going to sound like I don’t know what he’s going to say if you know Mark Lewis you never
know what he’s going to say so it should be a very interesting episode it should be a good interview and your guess is as
good as mine what we’re going to talk about because if I ask him a question I’m sure we’re not going to talk about
that question he’s going to have his own agenda so stay tuned and we should be able to get Marc Lewis on this listener
writes in what is the best biocide for me to use in my cooling tower folks I
wish I could answer that question because I would just be so incredibly awesome as a water treat or if I could
tell you what the best biocide was to use in your cooling tower to reiterate
what Jim was saying it’s a microbe aside so Jim if you’re listening and if you’re a fan of scaling up you’ve heard the Jim
Luca episode and he said we don’t use biocides we use microbicides I’m in no
means making fun of the person that wrote this question I’m just trying to insert a little bit of past advice that
one of our guests gave us my advice would be go to the AWT member section
and download the biocide selection matrix that is one of the many tools
that we have at our disposal that tells us a lot of generic information about
every biocide that we could use in that cooling tower I’m also willing to bet
you do not have every single one of the biocides listed on that biocide matrix
in your product line so I would start by looking at that matrix by highlighting
the ones that are available to you and then look at how they work very simply
by asides work if they’re a non oxidizer they’re going to disrupt how it either
eats or how it reproduces and oxidizing by side is just gonna blow it up from
the inside out for a lack of better ways of saying that a lot of programs today
are requiring oxidizing by asides because they have been proven to be a
better due diligent Legionella prevention program so that’s something
you might want to take in consideration also taking consideration what are the issues that you’re having is it with
algae is it with bacteria is it just in one spot is it all over the system what’s your evidence that you’re solving
a problem and then work towards that and the biocide matrix sheet actually has
listed on it what it’s good for and what it’s not good for now with any sheet
like that there are people’s opinions and I will tell you that I disagree with some of the things that are on that
sheet but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad sheet it’s just someone’s opinion on how that works and there get their opinion
from their experiences I’ve had a different experience on a couple of those biocides for some things that they
say they work well or they work really well on keep that in mind whenever you read anything information is good but it’s up
to you to go out and prove it to be either correct or incorrect so I really
can’t answer the question if you write in and you’re a little bit more specific about what you’re trying to do maybe I
can answer that question a little bit better but hopefully what I told you
you’re able to pull in some information and make some better decisions and maybe
you’ll start looking for something that you didn’t know to look at before there was also an article now that I think
about it that Colin frein wrote for the analyst I’m gonna see if I can get permission to put that on my show notes
page so that way for those of you that aren’t members of the Association of Water Technologies you can see some of
the benefits that you are missing out on and Colin in this article did a great
job of explaining why you would use certain biocides and what they do and how they work so let me get permission
to put that up if not just go to the AWT Members Only page and search for I think
it was I don’t remember the title and I don’t have it in front of me but search for biocides and that which should come
up biocides and colin frein and that should come up thank you for your question this next listener writes trace
thank you so much for putting on the scaling-up podcast I’ve learned so much from it and I can definitely tell you
that I am a better water trader now than before scaling up was available to us
thanks so much for doing that I I’m almost speechless of course I’m on a
podcast so I can’t be speechless that’s not good for the show he goes on to say
you’ve done so much for us what can we the scaling-up nation do for you and
again I’m I think that that is just an incredible comment it’s the reason that
I started this show I want to be that nudge that might push you to do something a little bit better or learn
little bit extra about something that you knew you needed to do you knew you needed to learn but you just needed that
little push to get you there so this person says that I am doing that and I appreciate you saying that that
validates the whole reason that I’m doing this show as far as what you could
do for me I want to say it’s keep doing what you’re doing keep writing in your
questions because without those I have very little material to talk about this
entire show was based on your questions I couldn’t had this show or not for
people like you you can help me continue to get the word out to other water treaters that we do have this podcast a
lot of people don’t even know what a podcast is in our industry so if you can be ambassadors for me and explain to
them what a podcast is and why this is one that they should listen to that
would help some ways you can do that is maybe share some episodes if you go to my web page I’ve got a download link and
you can just send those links to people say hey this is a this is a great episode on what we were talking about
last week you know listen to this that that will definitely help us well of
course subscribing if you’re on iTunes or stitcher or one of those services that allows me to make sure you’re
listening to the episodes that I’m producing and I don’t have to tell you to listen to them they automatically show up on your device continuing to
listen I would say let me know what you want to talk about but just listen to me if you guys continue to listen I have an
audience so there you go and I guess the other thing I was I was trying to think what are all the things that we could do the way I communicate
what’s going on in the show in between shows is on my LinkedIn account so if
you’ll connect with me Trace Blackmore on LinkedIn you will get information
about that show I also have a scaling up page on LinkedIn so that way you know
when shows are coming out you know when they’re released or if I’m doing another Meetup like I did at
convention you will know about that before I even announce it on the show thanks again for asking that question
that’s just awesome another listener writes in trace can you please tell us
what you carry in your test kit I feel it what’s a Capital One that says what’s
in your wallet so this is what’s in your test kit I’m actually doing this on memory because I’m recording this
remotely and I don’t have my test kit in front of me so I might miss a couple items but I think I’ve got most of them
I’ve got a Miron l6p and of course that does my conductivity and my pH got a dr
900 that’s the the new spectrophotometer that replaced the dr 890 and I’ve got
about minimum 20 vials in there if you have a dr 890 or a dr 900 you probably
hate it because you’re waiting on tests i don’t wait on tests i know where
everything needs to be at a certain time when i’m running things you’ve heard on other shows i try not to think too much
when i’m doing tests other than am i confirming or disproving what i’m thinking is going on with the system and
I’m just getting my tests done accurately and efficiently so I can
start working on the system so if I’m waiting on one single vial to prepare something else that takes too much time
so if I’ve got four systems and I’m running for iron’s I’m running for irons at the exact same time and I just go
boom boom boom and record that information all at once so I don’t have to switch back and forth I’ve got a UV
pin so I can digest phosphate and I can run asel tests and things that require
UV digestion I’ve got a digital tae trader in there so I can get your Rhett
quality testing without having to carry those huge awkward burette
around I have an ATP meter adenosine triphosphate and a couple of pins that I
always carry around so we can measure what the biological loading and the system is via ATP I have a temperature
gun so I can verify you know what temperatures are they’re great for steam traps
refractometer so I can test for glycol Erlenmeyer flask so a lot of people make
fun of me because I titrate an Erlenmeyer flask I guess that just shows that I’m old school but I’m really quick
at it and I can I can swirl them really good and not make too much of a mess or any mess rather because that’s why I use
them they do take up quite a bit of space so I have to warn you on that I always have more sample bottles than I
need and I like to use the 500ml sample bottles I don’t like running back and forth for more sample who cares if
you’re throwing sample away but if you got to stop what you’re doing to go get more sample that’s normally a pain of
course my trusty channel locks are in my test kit I have graduated cylinders of
both the 10 mil and the 50 ml variety I’ve got a syringe in there the syringe
I believe is 60 MLS and I’ll use that to measure sometimes because it does a little bit quicker and also use that if
I’ve got to filter anything out I’ve got an emergent heater in my test kit so if I need to do a heat reversion I can do
that I’ve got my favourite flashlights my trusty flashlight so I can look and
see what’s going on in the system speaking of light can you think of a worse area when it comes to good
lighting than the mechanical room we’re running our tests in this mechanical room that could not have worse light and
now we’re trying to interpret test results well one of the guys here Blackmore enterprises found this really
cool folding desk lamp it’s battery-powered it’s rechargeable it’s got a USB port
that you can charge it up when it needs charging and it the cool thing is it folds up very thin so it goes in the
side of your test kit taking up hardly any space and when you need to bring good light to the party it unfolds and
you can direct it to exactly where you need good light I’m gonna have an
affiliate link on my show notes page so go ahead and click on that and hopefully that will give you the light that you’ve
been looking for in the mechanical room and then I’ve got a trash bag in there which is no more than just a ziplock bag
that says trash on it because I don’t want to leave any trash behind my goal is to leave the
mechanical room better than I found it and if there’s a bunch of powder pillows and spent filters it’s just telling that
customer that I don’t care about his space so I want to make sure I’m taking everything out that I brought in and then of course my phone is a tool that’s
where I’m doing my service report so it’s got my calculator it’s got charts and tables if I need to reference
something and it’s got all of the instructions to my tests now I know how
to do all my tests but what I don’t know or all the interferences that could
happen with that test so having that document available to me I’m able to see
why am I not getting the result that I’m hoping for or that I think I need to get if it’s an interference I can then look
at the procedure and figure out how to solve for that whether it’s diluting the
sample or something else as far as the
tests that I have and I’ve got a lot of tests in my test kit more than any sane person should have so I’m just gonna
mention the the big ones that I have so I’ve got a salt test azof is the yellow
metal corrosion inhibitor and I want to make sure I’ve got enough of that in there I’ve got all things alkalinity
I’ve got tests for P and M and also OHL kulinda t and I like the barium chloride
the separate Oh H tests I’ve got some chlorides in there copper iron we use
total hardness and then if we need to do something more than that we’ll take it back to the lab and we can well we’ve
got calcium hardness buffer there and we’ll just subtract it to the – to find magnesium but I found in the field
it’s a worser case scenario for total you know we’ve never had any issues using that and there’s only so much
space you have in your test kit so for a test or a piece of equipment to make it
into my test kit it’s got to do more than one function it’s got to be a multitasker and I just haven’t found a
reason to keep calcium in there because I can get by with the total and allows me to keep something else in there I’ve
got a phosphate test and I only use ortho phosphate and I convert everything to ortho I’m sure that’s a conversation
and another scaling up episode fight night right silica and I think
that’s probably the big ones like I said we’ve got I’ve got some other things in there just because I’m doing some other
tests and working with people or trying to validate a new product or something
like that oh and I’ve got some DI bottles in there the largest di bottles that I could find
I’ll fill those up with water and then shake them up and it’s got it’s got all four types of resin in there and it
pretty much just grabs onto anything that’s not water and I use that to rinse
and I rent I clean up after every test that I do or my whole series of tests
and I know if I pull a vial out or anything in my test kit it is clean and ready to use I don’t have to worry ever
that part of the test is from the last system that I tested I make sure that
those things are clean and I run those through a special dishwasher that we
have that runs on DI water and phosphate free soap every single week and if we’re
you for doing more tests we’re doing it more often than that and then also the DI water we use to dilute so if I have
too much of a particular item say iron I believe the range of iron is three or
three point three so if I have an iron of four in a system I’m not going to be able to read that so I might want to dilute that in half and then I’ll read
that and then I’ll multiply that answer by two and that’s how I would use my DI water so there’s a look in what is in
trace Blackmore’s test kit the next question trés can you please explain
what magnetite is magnetite so I’m assuming that you want more than its
fe3o4 it’s three molecules of iron and four of oxygen magnetite is typically
what we want to get in boilers when we’re treating boilers properly so if
you’ve ever done a boiler inspection and you’re around a real seasoned water trader they open that boiler up and they
want to see nice black or dark gray to
essentially what they’re looking at is the magnetite though in a in a high pH
environment and no oxygen we should be able to form that magnetite and
essentially what we’re doing there is we’re inhibiting corrosion by corroding
the metal I know that sounds really weird and when I teach corrosion I always say that and people look at me
like I’m crazy but that’s essentially what we do imagine if we had a nail and
we put it in a glass of water and I’m sure we’ve all done this either in chemistry class or as a kid
eventually that nail it disappears is totally dissolved water is the universal solvent water given enough time is going
to dissolve anything it comes in contact with the Grand Canyon is a great example of that
but that nail is too and that nail is a great definition of active corrosion
active corrosion means it’s going to corrode and the corrosion byproducts that are on that nail are going to
slough off and then more gonna form and that’s gonna slough off and eventually there’s no more left to slough off the
nails just gone active corrosion it’s continuing to corrode passive corrosion
is what we do we add something to the environment to the water or the water
characteristics itself our of means to promote this passivation in this case
we’re using magnetite we’re promoting magnetite because it’s a very tenacious film on the metal surface that will not
continue to corrode once it’s there we should be stable but the issue is is it’s not always going to be there it’s
gonna slough off as well and we need to make sure that the conditions around it are of such so we can repair that piece
of metal or that piece of corrosion protection back so we call that passive corrosion and that’s where passivation
comes from so if you’ve ever had a new system and that somebody said you have to passivate it that’s essentially what
you’re doing normally that involves some cleaning to make sure the system is nice and clean and then we’re making sure that all the
metal in the system is corroded to a point where it’s not going to continually actively corrode so I hope
that makes a little more sense on what magnetite is specifically that’s in a boiler in a pH environment above ten
point three it’s that black dark gray color that is just so glorious whenever
you open up a boiler and you see and you don’t see any pitting you don’t see any
flash rusting or anything around there and you say yes not only did I do my job
the operators did their job and here is the proof of it well here’s my last
question and this listener asks when I first started my episodes when I first
started the podcast I was focused on just water treatment technologies and
information on that and I’ve spoken on other topics that weren’t necessarily
testing and troubleshooting and why was that well I will admit that when I first
started this show I didn’t really know what it would become I have so many more listeners now than I
ever hoped that I would and I want to make sure that one this show stays fun
for you and it stays fun for me as well and I thought you know what are all the
things that I’ve had to learn in my water treatment career and if all I had to do was learn how to run my tests I
wouldn’t have a full career I had to learn not only the tests I had to learn all the things that went along with that
and I had to learn how to work with customers I had to learn how to sell
things I had to learn a little bit about electricity a little bit about plumbing jeez though the list just just goes on
and then when I became a business owner as I said on the episode with Tim Fulton
I didn’t know what I didn’t know so I had to put myself in situations that were constantly challenging me so I
could become better running my business so we didn’t run into problems that I didn’t know what to
look for and if you really look at it regardless of if you own a business or not if you’re in charge of an account
that’s a business and if you don’t know if it’s profitable or not you don’t know all the ways to gauge how well that
account is doing then you’re gonna fail and I have really sought out this
information I read a lot of books and it wasn’t easy so I’m trying to make this podcast where
water traders can come and learn about every aspect that’s going to touch them
in their career so if it seems like a bait-and-switch I apologize my goal is to pour my heart
and soul into this show I truly enjoy teaching and inspiring people to be
better than they were I think there’s so much more than just the mechanics of how
to run pinks and blues in an industry like this so I hope I haven’t upset anybody by doing this I hope I’ve made
the show better in fact I’ve gotten a lot of comments saying how much they appreciate all of the different types of
speakers that I have on this show because they learn something new or inspires them to do something so thank
you for your question it allows me to say something that I probably should have said a while ago I hope that this
show is the place that you come to learn about every aspect of the water
treatment business whether it be testing or profit and loss statements how about
that if I didn’t answer your question today don’t worry if you sent me a
question I promise you I received it it just wasn’t one of the ones that was
selected and that went by ultra quick for me I’m not sure how the other end
felt about that but I really enjoyed answering those questions and it’s been a while like I said since it’s just been
the two of us listening to scaling up answering just quiet I don’t think we’ve
ever done a show with just questions so I we’ll do that again and the reason I’m able to do that is because you are
listening to the show and sending me questions on what you want me to talk
about I couldn’t have done a so like this if it wasn’t for you so when I say for water treaties by water treaters
that’s what I mean you guys are telling me what it is that we need to talk about
oh if you’ll continue that I will continue to have a show I just want to
thank you for listening to scaling up it’s my hope that you enjoy this show
enough to tell a colleague about it and then they enjoyed enough that they can
tell someone else about it you haven’t heard me say in a while that a rising
tide lifts all boats I hope that the questions that these individuals have
asked during today’s show will lift your boat and get you thinking just a little
different about some of the things that you’re doing out in the field so you will be a better water trader tomorrow
than you were have a great week folks [Music]