The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music] foreign [Music]
to scaling up the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our
systems I’m Trace Blackmore cwt your host for scaling up H2O and Nation happy
industrial water week yes this is the fifth time we have celebrated industrial
water week if this is your first time celebrating industrial water week this
is an entire week where we all get to celebrate together this amazing
profession that we are in industrial water one of the most noble professions
out there of course my favorite profession out there and all of you
listening get to celebrate along with me we call ourselves the scaling up nation
and we are celebrating this great industry so year five of industrial
water week so amazing to think that it’s the fifth year because the podcast
started during the first year we were celebrating industrial water week in
fact James McDonald who was the founder of industrial water week he was very
instrumental in my conversations with people on did we want to do an industry
related podcast would anybody listen to this podcast and James was one of the
people that convinced me that yes this industry needs a podcast and I’m sure
glad he did because now we’re close to 20
000 members strong in the scaling up nation and it is just so humbling to
think about that when all I’m doing is recording my voice he here in my studio
in Atlanta Georgia and by the way if you ever need motivation on when you do
something you’re not very good at it but if you stick to it you will learn you
will get experience you will find people that will help make you better please
listen to episode one of scaling up H2O I had no clue what I was doing but I had
a desire to do it and so many people were willing to raise me up to share
with me how I could get better at hosting a podcast whether that was how
to interview how to breathe properly how to enunciate properly yes I do have a
speaking coach that I work with or how I get the right kind of equipment and how
to set it up so many people have have poured into me so I could make this
podcast better and every time industrial water week comes around I just think about all of that because those are
people that are in our industry a lot of people heard things and they would write to me and say Trace I noticed that there
was this in one of your episodes you might want to try doing your future
episodes this way so we are the scaling up Nation this is our podcast and this
is our week year five of celebrating industrial water week now every year my
staff gets together and we try to come up with a way that we can celebrate now
personally I like to do something with my company we share success stories
around the various themed days and who’s got the funniest story who’s got maybe a
sales story around it and then we like to do a cake so on Friday we’ll have some type of water themed cake if you go
back to previous years I’ve actually given some recipes out one year I talked
about George Washington’s favorite cake which was called a water cake the main ingredient in it was water that recipe
was built for when perishable items really weren’t available I heard people
loved it I heard people said they used it as a door stop so feel free to go back to previous industrial water Week
episodes for that recipe and I’m thinking Rising time Mastermind we
always do something to celebrate the industrial water week and one of the
things that we do is just make sure that we’re reminding each other to celebrate it within our companies we’re all
industrial water Traders we all touch that industry and it’s a really simple way for you to connect with people in
your company just to celebrate what it is is that you do day to day then we
also get together with the scaling up H2O staff and we try to think of what do
we normally do to celebrate industrial water week and what are some new things that we can do because after all this is
scaling up h2o’s Flagship holiday because it’s all about us it’s all about
industrial water treatment so there are several normal things that we do each
year and of course the bottom line thing you have to do during industrial water
week is you have to take pictures and share stories and you will hashtag those
to iww.22 and scaling up H2O we do that
each and every year and we ask that during the theme of the day for example
today is pre-treatment you will take a picture sure of something that is in the
pre-treatment industry and share a little story with that and hashtag it to iww22 and scaling up H2O that allows us
to see each other and realize that we are not alone we’re part of a community
and we are in this together an example is today I’m going to take a picture of
a little di unit a little deionized water unit that we have in the back of
our warehouse that we use for blending and I don’t think that guy gets enough
press so I’m going to highlight him and share how important that little device
is when we are blending some of our more delicate products by the way if you
refer to water treatment equipment with pronouns you might be a water treater do
you guys remember that skit that was something that Jeff Foxworthy used to do Jeff Foxworthy is an Atlanta native he’s
a neighbor and he used to do a series called you might be a redneck if I mean
after all we live in Georgia so you got to talk about it so I always have a running list of these so you might be a
water treater if you find pillow packets in your dryer lint tray you might be a
water treater if you determine your best pair of pants by assessing which one has
the least bleach stains or caustic holes in them
you might be a water treater if you triple rinse your water glasses before
setting the dinner table then you might be a water treater if you
can spot cooling tower plumes everywhere you go especially on vacation and then
finally you might be a water treater if you cannot get through the week without
listening to a new episode of scaling up H2O anyway total Segway let me get back
to what we were talking about before this year as every year we’re going to
bring you a brand new episode each and every day during this industrial water
week so and if you’re wondering Monday today is pre-treatment Monday tomorrow
boiler Tuesday Wednesday is cooling Thursday we’re celebrating waste water
and then Friday we will close out industrial water week with careers
Friday so I hope you help me celebrate each and every day by hashtagging
pictures of those themes and sharing your stories to iww 22 and scaling up
H2O now what we’re doing special this year because we always do something a
little bit different each and every industrial water week celebration our
team decided that that we are going to have short interviews within each episode this week about what that
particular day is themed and those short interviews are meant for you to share
with anybody you want to learn more about that day’s topic little small
shareable interviews Within These episodes and who would you share them with well who do you want to learn more
about a particular topic maybe it’s a potential or new employee maybe it’s
your roommate maybe it’s your parents maybe it’s your kids you get to figure out that part so I hope you enjoy that
segment each and every day this week now here to light the industrial water week
torch for 2022 here’s James McDonald
hello scaling up Nation happy industrial water week as we celebrate pre-treatment
Monday I’m reminded of a time when I was a corporate engineer traveling with one of our field reps
at One account the operator was scratching his head over High connectivity in his boilers
it had increased to 9 800 micro Siemens which was many times higher than it
should have been despite the higher than normal blowdown we followed the flow of water Upstream
to see what might be causing this our next stop was the RO tank which was
actually a combination of aural permute in polished condensate checking the RL permi showed it was
probably not the problem the operator reported that condensate polisher number one had just come online
that morning we checked its output and it appeared to be fine as well but I asked the operator
to put this unit into regeneration again then I stood watched and listened
I observed as number two unit came online and number one went offline I saw the backwash cycle followed by the
brine draw cycle all looked good then came the slow rinse cycle and
nothing happened by nothing I mean no flow was going to the drain at all
once the time is up the factory cycle started and flowed to the drain recommenced
measuring the connectivity at the end of the slow rinse revealed 1800 microsiemens
we had found our culprit in the source of the high conductivity the slow rinse valve was not working
properly and the brine was not being thoroughly rinsed out of the unit
when condensate polisher number one would come back online a slug of high conductivity water would be sent to the
boilers the operator rebuilt the valve and the problem was solved
I like this story because it reminds me not only of the importance of knowing the process flow of a water system but
also the importance of knowing when to just stand and observe at the right place at the right time
I hope you enjoyed today’s story on water and equally hope you will share one of your own on social media to help
celebrate free treatment Monday of industrial water week don’t forget to
tag them with hashtag iww22 and hashtag scalingup H2O
I love that story because it proves you diagnose before you prescribe it also
highlights that observations are a lot more important than running things out
of your test kit so many times we get tunnel vision to our test kit and yes
that is a very important tool but to just stand back and think about what’s
going on and what you know you will be amazed at what comes to you so maybe
that story has inspired you to hashtag a
story and a picture to scaling up H2O and iww22 I sure hope you help us celebrate
by sharing all your stories during industrial water week because after all
it reminds us all about how many strong we are it reminds us how we’re not alone
it reminds us that we have a Community it reminds us that we are the scaling up
Nation now let’s talk a little about pre-treatment
my lab partner on this pre-treatment Monday is simra ghoul simra how are you
celebrating industrial water week so far good I actually know the industrial week
through James James McDonald’s and I try to follow him publishing some uh stories
or the pictures about the industrial World Series every day that’s a great way to celebrate industrial water week
well I want to thank you for coming on the podcast today where it’s all about pre-treatment so we’re going to be
talking about pre-treatment and I thought just to continue the conversation or start the conversation
so everybody can join in how would you define what pre-treatment is
create treatment is we can we can describe it like any chemical physical
or mechanical treatment before main water treatment and I’m happy to be here
because I’m also a chair in the pre-treatment committee I would love to
uh also encourage people to our community well let’s talk about that for a second
so you’re referring to the association of water Technology’s pre-treatment committee what does that committee do as
a pre-treatment committee we try to contribute photo treatment Market we try
to have water treated especially in the water pre-treatment area so right now we
are working on softener project we try to make short videos directly addressed
for the troubleshooting to help for the especially for new Engineers new author
treaters but pretty treatment committee do we try to create documentation for
pre-treatment including everything equipment or chemical or mechanical treatment we haven’t published yet but
we just finished our the aerator Excel file and it’s going to be published very
soon I think and we have been working on the project like soft dinner reverse
osmosis including troubleshooting any kind of things make uh need help for the
new engineer and help for the water to to make their job easier so simra people
listening today maybe they’ve got a water softener on their boiler maybe they don’t why would somebody need
pre-treatment that’s a great question water treatments start for the makeup product the better
makeup water you have you might have more efficient water in your system more
efficient in your system luckily in us we have great water but in whatever
system you have you need to say from corrosion you need to say from
microbiologic uh stay soft and for this one you are doing water treatment but if
you have pre-treatment you are going to save more energy you are going to say use less chemical because you have
already have good water as a result for example if it is boiler or cooling tower
you are gonna less bleed you are going to save more water so the better pre-treatment you have is going to
increase completely your systems dramatically it’s going to help a lot for your systems
summer I’m curious you’re originally from Turkey how is pre-treatment
different from over there versus the United States first of all our we have water shortage
there and we have to reuse every water the water is like a gold for us it is
super important it’s in here of also quality is much much much much better I
can tell we don’t have any systems without pre-treatment pre-treatment is
like a part of water treatment but it is inevitable you cannot because for
example I used to live in a peninsula and we had huge water shortage there we
have to use reverse osmosis to almost every hotel has reverse osmosis because
we don’t even have enough water for our facility so we have to create domestic
water for this one we use C for it as a makeup water or in here I we talked
before when I first came us we made another postcard video I told you conductivity was 100 around hunters in
New York and for me for my country this is reverse Osmos water this is literally
they have huge problem and on all middle of the Season you can see shortage of
the water you can’t even Supply water for the systems for the any any facility or you can even see some some touristic
places in the middle of the summer you can see colorful swimming pools because
of the chemical reaction it is much much worse water quality than here as a
result we cannot even imagine to put any system without period treatment this is
not even you can’t even think about it you know it’s a double-edged sword for
the people that live in the United States we are blessed with clean readily available water but because of that we
don’t take care of it the way that we should so just by applying pre-treatment
we can be better stewards of this most valuable resource so let’s face it if we
don’t have water nothing else matters that we do in life so I’m curious maybe
we have a customer that we want them to pre-treat their water we know they can
use less products so that we know that they’ll bleed less we know that there is an environmental reason to do this
there’s a cost reason to do this but for some reason they are just not giving us
that purchase order what would you suggest that we say to that customer
first of all uh we have to explain them how reuse is important
and the main problem here as you said U.S is a blessed country we have amazing
nature here we have uh amazing sources here water sources here and the other
thing are much much much bigger and my observation energy saving not the
priority here this is main problem if I have a customer doesn’t want to do
pre-treatment I will definitely go for the energy saving part because energy venue if you have the great water
sources you have to have pre-treatment if you have free treatment you can save
energy and energy equal money and when I first came to us I was going to research
about the water treatment and I was shocked in here we are losing over
billion dollars just because of the you know right not using water treatment or
not doing a pre-treatment not only immediately corrosion scale and Energy
savings energy posture over billion dollars I would first explain my
customer how much money I can even calculate certain stuff and I can show
how much money is Gonna Save and I think all our customers when they heard the
word money they can interest what we are there of Services take care and we can
even say you know small amount of skill how much electric cost for them how much cost cost for them if we explain this I
think it is much easier or you know using just just filtration just using
basic filtration how much they can cycle up if we connect with this as a money it
is much easier to them to understand I think I believe like that so in order to get somebody to be green you’ve got to
talk about them spending less green actually not because to be green you
need to in order to reduce your chemical it reduce your chemical to be much more
green you have to do that in mechanically and even for that you need something pre-treatment from
mechanically you know instead of you using chemical you can use some mechanic
Ray you to reduce it and you can be more green to not to be green maybe but more
green Sarah where do you see the future of pre-treatment going I think it is gonna
be more and more critical unfortunately human being we are not responsible
enough to our voter sources our globe our birth our environmental our water
sources is not getting better any better actually they are getting worse and worse the increasing population global
warming and pollution unfortunately unfortunately we
are sources it’s getting worse and worse as a result of things I think uh
preacher is going to be extremely critical here uh not only here I mean
all around the world actually rest of the world it is also it is already so
critical it is already so critical because you have to save energy you have to save water you have to do some
conservation of water more carefully as a result uh reusing pre-treating month it gets
it’s gonna get so critical I think I can tell this and I can also think
not only um you know treatment part but also mechanically It’s Gonna Change I believe
from pretty treatment part also Gonna Change to equipment part we are gonna
use more mechanical treatment instead of chemical parts and I say again I think
uh pretty treatment is going to be extremely critical in water treatment diary some are for people that are
trying to bolster their education on pre-treatment what are your favorite resources
I awt have amazing sources on our webpage and we also have handbooks for
that and I encourage people to check for that one and besides hard books are
subcommittees not only pre-treatment all of them we are trying to do our best to
you know contribute to a water treatment and they can be amazing sources besides
these companies like us we all have our trainings like right now we even have
YouTube videos for informative videos and we are publishing so much informative in our webpage and I think
we are getting more and more responsible about this and we all as a water Twitter companies we are getting better for that
and we all can be good sources for the new engineers well semra I want to thank
you for coming on the scaling up H2O podcast and helping us celebrate pre-treatment Monday
thank you so much it’s so nice to be here with you thank you
scale up Nation simmer’s love for the water treatment industry is infectious this is something I noticed about her
the very second we met she is one of the best cheerleaders we have in our
industry and you can just hear how much she loves our industry in her voice
we’re going to have a longer interview with simra coming up in November so be sure to listen to that when it releases
have you ever thought back about what you know now but you didn’t necessarily
know it when you first started out in the industry I do that all the time in
fact that’s how I figure out how I’m going to teach a particular topic I
think about what mindset I was in when I first learned about that topic a few
weeks ago on episode 268 I interviewed Jeff Garrett of Garrett Callahan after
we finished recording that interview I asked Jeff this very question
I’m Jeff Garrett and I’m with Garrett Callahan company I’m the president and one of the things that happened to me
right when I started and right when I had taken over some accounts when my dad
got me in there he said you’re going to take over all these accounts I was kind of a service tech and so I went to Dixie
packaging and and the solenoid wasn’t working well and it was there was a
chiller down in the bottom of the basement so I went down there and I tried to turn the thing off turn the
valve off so I could take the solenoid apart and clean it out because it wasn’t working the whole thing fell off and it
was right at the edge of the exit of the chiller so the water’s blasting out of
there it probably you know 100 PSI or something I don’t know what it is and of
course I can’t get that thing back on because the little nipple had rotted so I’m running upstairs and I’m going to
get the guy that you know the old guy that’s there and he’s just laughing at me and there’s water everywhere where
all over but it’s going going down the drain I realize then you can’t fix everything you’ve got to work with the
people that are there you know they they know what’s there they know that there’s there’s probably some issues and those
are the things that you learn but only learn through experience and sometimes
you have to have other people get involved or otherwise it’s going to take this took me in the rest of the day to
clean this up and you know then I felt terrible about it and and then they made a joke about it for years and years
after I came so it all worked out but I did learn a lesson don’t mess with
things without their knowledge and get in people involved
well Nation there’s no doubt about it Murphy definitely lives big and strong
in the water treatment industry and in case you don’t understand the reference
Murphy’s law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong but as Jeff
said you learn from your experiences and the next time you encounter the same
situation you’ll handle it differently better in fact because now you have
experience to draw from Chris golden of Taylor technologies always used to say
experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want I love that
phrase well I don’t think Jeff wanted to flood the mechanical room and get soaking wet but he did get some valuable
experience that he used throughout his career stand up Nation I sure hope you have
enjoyed this kickoff episode for industrial water week
2022 on this pre-treatment Monday to end our episodes this week we’re going to
play Encore episodes of detective H2O everybody’s favorite water treatment
detective well that’s not exactly true well the true part is detective H2O is
everybody’s favorite water treatment detective but we’re not going to play Encore episodes each and every day this
week on Friday we are releasing a brand new
detective H2O released for the first time ever here on scaling up H2O and
here’s a spoiler alert there is a special guest voice within that episode
happy industrial water week Nation I I hope you a great pre-treatment Monday
remember to hashtag your picture and your story to iww 22 and scaling up H2O
Nation here is the case of normalization [Music]
welcome to detective H2O the case of normalization [Music]
rain flooded off his black umbrella as Herbert Henry oxidine Pi cwt stepped
outside a six-story building where he rented office space a few minutes before the PowerHouse chief operator Howard
Clyde myriadic had phoned
on the third ring the water detective answered detective H2O here the best
water treater this side of the Ohio solving water problems drop by drop what you got detective H2O we need your
smarts over here at Aardvark stamping Incorporated this is Howard we’ve got
this Reverse Osmosis System my crew records a lot of data on it we just have
no idea when to clean it my guys are good with the books see lots of practice
from their extracurricular activities if you know what I mean we just don’t know what to do with this Ro data when should
we be cleaning the RO we’ve been guessing putting our fingers in the air and just guessing
I’ve been meaning to come up to your neck of the woods for a while now Howard I’ll start my old Ford and be over as
fast as it can Coast there it’s mostly downhill crack open the checkbook and save me some coffee
[Music] dodging the raindrops detected H2O marched from the guard shock to the
PowerHouse at Aardvark stamping Incorporated there are three 100 000 pound per hour coal-fired water tube
boilers lined the main aisle with the operator room on the far side as he searched for Howard the water
detective took a moment to look through the logbook everything appeared to be in order with regular testing and no
notable events with the water treatment equipment during the last few weeks detective H2O took a moment to chat with
the on floor operator he found sitting in front of the boilers with his feet propped up Ox it’s been a while how have you been
oh not bad Barney not bad at all don’t bother getting up how about you and
things around here I’d complain but nobody would listen things around here have been going fine we finally rebuilt
some of the valves on software number two a few months ago but she’d been eating her tires kicked for an embarrassingly long time
sounds good is Howard around he called me about interpreting the RO data Howard’s around here somewhere I’ll call
him on the radio and have him meet you at the RO you’ll find log sheets to the right of the units
detective H2O made his way to the RO observing the flow rates pressures connectivities percent recovery
temperature run times Etc as he listened to the unit run it was filling up the permeate storage
tank and at first glance things looked good the data on the log sheets only went back a month and didn’t show
anything obvious a more thorough look at the data would tell the real story though detective H2O thanks for coming
as you can see the arrows humming right along and as you can see from that log seat you’re holding my crew is good at
keeping the books we completely guess when to clean it though the permeate flow rate is relatively constant but I
know these things do foul and need periodic cleaning it’s cleaning every three months really necessary though or
should we clean more or less frequently I’ve got no idea I see your problem Howard reverse osmosis systems are a
great technology they can save a ton of money in boiler fuel cost and water costs I’ve worked with them for years
but they can be counterintuitive when interpreting their data changes in pressure temperature dissolved solids
percent recoveries and so forth can make just eyeballing the data impossible they
can work against each other to make what seems like a good Trend into a hidden disaster do you have the rest of the
data we should go back several months to see what’s been going on I’ve got better
than that detective I’ve been entering it into a spreadsheet grab that log seat hang in there and we’ll put that data in
too when Howard fired up his computer and entered the most recent data a clear story still did not show look at this
detective the permeate flow rate has been steady for the past year very steady I start getting nervous when it
runs for too long between cleanings we cleaned this unit last October and then late February but you wouldn’t know it
about looking at the Permian flow no changes at all are the membranes not failing should I stop cleaning I
wouldn’t draw that conclusion yet let’s see how variations and variables such as pressure and temperature affect the
permeate flow it’s called normalization and allows you to do an Apple’s apples comparison of the system with the
membranes you have today perform as well under the same conditions as when they were installed normalization uses
mathematical tricks to take the membranes back in time to answer exactly that question we’ve been comparing
apples and oranges up to this point let’s dump your data into this normalization spreadsheet I developed
based upon ASTM standards and advice from membrane manufacturers let’s see if this data sings like a
canary [Music]
whipping out his hand cranked laptop from his briefcase detective H2O transfer the RO data into his
normalization worksheet copy down his equations and updated the graphs
then he whistled look what we have here Howard wow that’s
a horse of a different color detective looks like you’ve taken the blinders off yes you see as a membrane fouls it takes
more pressure to force the water through the membrane counter-intuitively as temperatures increase water passes through the
membrane more easily these and other factors can make non-normalized data look just fine but as you can see in
this graph of normalized permeate flow or npf it doesn’t look fine at all look
at these increases in October and late February those would be your cleanings Ro cleaning should be done based upon
analysis of the data like we’re doing here some rules of thumb of when to clean is when the normalized permeate
flow decreases by 10 to 15 percent normalized pressure drop increases by 15
percent and or normalized salt passage increases 10 percent
some membrane manufacturers may have slightly different recommendations but these are a good place to start
cleaning too frequently isn’t necessarily good for the membranes just like waiting too long can be bad for
them as well this is great detective H2O how have we been doing then it looks like you
probably waited too long between cleanings when you did the October cleaning but the membranes appear to have recovered well then when you
cleaned again in late February you probably cleaned a little too early it may have gone another month or so
before the data would indicate the optimal time to clean how about now is it time to clean now looking at its
normalized data I’d say things are actually holding steady Barney said you fixed up software number two was that
sometime around or after the last cleaning you know now that I think about it yes it was the beginning of March
that unit was prematurely hard for longer than I’m willing to admit but should we clean the arrow now it’s been
over three months going on four shouldn’t we clean I’d say no clean this Ro based upon the
normalized data and the data says the RO is not found enough to clean I’ll leave you a copy of this
normalization spreadsheet to keep logging your data into you can email it to me periodically to take a glance over
we’ll make the decision together that makes me feel a lot better the budget is tight around here at Aardvark
stamping Incorporated the longer I can go without buying new membranes the better on the flip side I don’t want to
spend more on labor and chemicals for RL cleaning than I have to either this is a good plan detective H2O I’m
glad you’re on my side I’m always on the side of wise water decisions for both the customer and the
industrial water equipment Now where’s that coffee
[Music]
in the underbelly and penthouses of the Metropolis of Waterville where the boilers percolate and cooling towers fog
there is one man who works tirelessly to end corrosion stop scale fight low-life
microbes and conserve water that man is detective H2O best water treated the
site of the Ohio solving water problems drop by drop foreign
[Music]