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[Music] foreign [Music]
up H2O the podcast where we celebrate industrial water week the official
podcast for water Traders everywhere to celebrate industrial water week
2022 the fifth time we have celebrated industrial water week and happy boiler
Tuesday everybody if you didn’t know we are celebrating industrial water week
all this week when is industrial water week it’s always the first full week of
October and we start out Mondays by celebrating pre-treatment boilers like
today on Tuesday we celebrate and then cooling Wednesday Wastewater Thursday
and careers Friday an entire week for us industrial water treaters to celebrate
this fantastic this Noble profession that we all love
on an industrial water week episode in the past it was a boiler Tuesday episode
I shared the story of a laundry I used to take care of and in that laundry were
two Cleaver Brooks boilers and they were named Thelma and Louise there was a
boiler operator there that was an amazing woodworker and he carved these
two beautiful plaques to name these boilers Thelma and Louise now I wish I
had a picture of these plaques these weren’t just carvings they were
embellished they were beautiful and the funny thing is is I know that gentleman
works so hard to make those beautiful plaques to display the names of those
two boilers the funny thing is is they hardly did any of my recommendations in
that plant and I couldn’t help but think you know if you spent a quarter of the
time doing the recommendations that we recommend versus all the time you spent
just making those plaques this would probably be the best boiler
plan in my entire portfolio I shared that a couple of years ago and so many
people had similar stories how do I know that because they hashtag them to
iww.22 and hashtag scalingup H2O so if
you have a story about a boiler I want to hear about it the nation wants to
hear about it your brothers and sisters in water treatment want to hear about it
because that’s how we celebrate industrial water week we share stories
through social media that’s hashtag iww.22 and hashtag scalingup H2O and by
the way thank you to all the people that shared their post for pre-treatment
Monday we’ve got lots of opportunities for you to share and Nation the reason I
bring it up is because that is my favorite way to celebrate industrial
water week I want to do it with the community that is you and trust me you
will enjoy celebrating that way too if you’re not already enjoying this
history is so much more fun when you share it with others
speaking of sharing each and every episode this week we are conducting many
interviews about the themes of that particular day today we have one on
boilers our goal with these mini episodes is to give you something shareable with the people you want to
educate now maybe it’s a customer maybe it’s a new or potential employee maybe
it’s your mom you get to figure that part out we want to make sure you have
something so you can share because we feel that’s how we make the industry
better when people understand our industry better it just gets better so
speaking of somebody that is really helping educate people all over the
world about industrial water treatment here’s James McDonald
hello scaling up Nation happy industrial water week as we celebrate boiler Tuesday I am
reminded of the importance of using all of your senses to assess a water system before you get started
this includes sight hearing smell touch and if you can figure out how to use
taste more power to you a customer had a blow down flash tank that drained to a floor drain below it
the floor drain was clogged so the blow down would overflow across the floor to another nearby drain
this was just something you got used to until the next shutdown when the drain was scheduled to be unclogged
one day I came in to service the account and used two sensors at once to ascertain the situation
I both slipped upon and saw a brownish slime on the floor
it takes years of Advanced Training to reach this level of diagnostic ability let me tell you
this brownish slime could have had a few possible causes first hard water softeners
since they were using a phosphate-based boiler treatment program calcium making it past the softeners would form calcium
phosphate and be dispersed with the polymers the brownish sludge could have been the calcium phosphate and polymer sludge
forming in the fire tube boilers second process contamination
the sludge could have been a result of processed contamination that was returned with the condensate
however knowing the customer’s processes I could think of nothing that would react in this way
third corrosion byproducts if a lot of iron is being returned due
to condensate system corrosion it would form a similar phosphate polymer sludge cognitive system corrosion had never
been an issue with ph as usually being on the high side instead of the low side the cause of the brown sludge ended up
being hard water softeners the water softeners held malfunctioned and hard water was going to the boilers
I regenerated the softeners and had them increase blow down and chemical feed to the boilers the softeners were fixed as
well the responsibility for testing the boilers had recently been changed to another of the customer’s maintenance
employees this person was not checking to see if the softeners were producing soft water
all they knew was that the boiler water was much Browner than usual and it was hard to keep a phosphate residual
they never asked anyone why this was happening this ended up being a lesson to the new
person luckily I caught the incident before too much damage was done and the boilers
opened up only slightly dirtier on the next inspection I like this story because it reminds me
of the importance of using your senses not only to diagnose a problem but to be safe as well
luckily I wasn’t hurt when I slept but it was a lesson to be far more careful the next time I stepped onto a wet floor
I also like the lesson on effective communication between operators and with you the industrial water treatment
professional 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 boiler Tuesday of industrial water week
don’t forget to tag them with hashtag iww22 and hashtag scalingup H2O
[Music] so James is challenging us to do water
treatment via our senses sight hearing smell touch and the challenge was taste
Nation please be very careful with this one but I can’t help telling you I have
a taste story when I was a very young chemist working at another company in
their lab I got the experience to use taste well sort of
I was a chemist in the lab and I got a phone call from a representative that
was in Florida and he was complaining about a particular product that we had it was a cooling tower product and
something was off now me being relatively new in the industry and
wanting to prove myself I didn’t ask any questions I took it for face value something was wrong I got the retain
sample number from the lot number and I pulled the retain and I ran all the
tests like a good chemist should couldn’t find anything wrong with it I
then called the gentleman back and reported to him that everything was as
it should be and then I asked the question that I should have asked in the
beginning that I would have saved two hours of work by asking that question and the gentleman proceeded to tell me
what was wrong with the product and what do you think it was he said was wrong with the product
yes you guessed it he said it just didn’t taste right
apparently this gentleman would stick his finger after opening the bung of
every drum that he would have and taste it and he said it did not
taste right Nation you cannot make this stuff up I encouraged him to stop that
procedure it was not good for anybody and Nation taste
I’m going to give it to James I don’t know really how you can use that safely
but if you can I’d love to hear about it I would love for you to hashtag that
story to scaling up H2O and iww 22. well each and every day this
week we’re also asking people what they wish they knew when they first started
in this industry now I sure wish I knew to ask people if they were tasting
products but whoever knew that one of my favorite stories about what they wish
they knew when they first started comes from my mentor Bruce ketrick senior and
this is a story you might have heard if you have taken his boiler class he doesn’t tell it much anymore but he used
to tell it every time he was talking about boilers so this is a story about
why you don’t want to rush and what happens when you rush and what happens
when you have a Scottish engineer questioning why you rushed
I wish I’d have to clean the water softeners at Anaconda Copper in Perth Amboy New Jersey uh these were old
permuted units with the old black base plates and the resin was dirty and so
what you do is you pull the heads off you put air lenses into the bottom you add your resin cleaner which is
basically citric and a phosphodic acid and you slowly agitate to make sure that
it cleans being in my early 20s and this being on Friday
and me wanting to get out and spend time with my friends in the bar I thought
that I could Quicken up the entire cleaning process by turning up the air unfortunately the way you tell yourself
water is by shaking the water with some soap at that time and it creates tremendous amount of foam everything was
going well I walked out went to get a cup of coffee came back and the plant engineer was standing there looking in
the window into this softer room just just looking at our chief and uh
John Greer said well Bruce about how high do you want to get the film before you’re done uh I have filled
the room with phone so needless to say you shut down you wash it all over the hose you start all
over you’re scared to death sometime around Saturday night I got done and he
came in and inspected it and looked at it was very pleased and then looked at around the room and he said well you’ve
cleaned the walls from here on Dune what about here because everywhere the phone touched clean the epoxy paint down to
like brand new paint you don’t realize how dirty a room is so you clean the paint below it and foam does not make a
straight line so Sunday morning after I got done cleaning the rest of the walls I got to go home that was my first
introduction to being out of the lab in a facility I don’t recommend sleeping in
a copper plant Nation again one of my favorite stories
that he tells and I think one of the reasons it’s my favorite story is I have almost an identical story and this comes
with I didn’t do what my father told me to do now if you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time you know
I wound up in this industry because my father Ray Blackmore was an industrial
water treater and he taught me the craft and when I first started out in this
industry my dad was a really good teacher but I was a typical son and just
because my dad told me something I always thought I could do it better of
course I lack the experience my father had but I don’t think Sons realize that
at the time that they are acting on whatever they are acting on so just like Bruce I had to clean a series of water
softeners they were fouled so I opened all of them up and my dad gave me Specific Instructions he told me how to
make the air Lance and if you’re wondering that’s just a PVC stick with a bunch of holes in it and you put an air
valve on the top of it so you can hook that up to an air compressor and you just trickle a little bit of air in to
agitate all of the resin in the tank and then of course you put cleaner in there
well here’s what I did I had a bunch of cleaner left over and I figured well my
dad only told me to put this much surely 10 times the amount’s going to be better and I don’t want to carry that stuff
back it’s heavy so I put so much more cleaner than my father told me to put in
there and instead of just trickling the airflow through that PVC Lance I really
put the Spurs to it and everything was fine and of course since everything was fine I went back to my car to start
putting some things away and carry some other things out to get ready well I
didn’t have the entire mechanical room full of foam but it was about three plus
feet of foam everywhere the entire mechanical room and why didn’t I get
more foam why didn’t foam all the way up to the top like in Bruce well that’s how much foam you get when you walk away to
go to your car that’s scientific proof of that and luckily instead of having to
clean the walls the walls were relatively clean and we didn’t really see anything on the walls but we had a
bunch of equipment in there like the boiler that it was just cleaned on the
bottom quarter and they did not like how the bottom was just cleaned so they had
me go ahead and wipe down everything else anyway it was a mess it took
forever to clean up all that foam I’m so fortunate that we did not short out any
electrical equipment I for the life of me don’t know how that didn’t happen but
it didn’t and I was there the entire day
hosing and spraying defoamer and wiping down equipment Nation
fast in water treatment is always slow I’m curious what story you have that you
want to share don’t keep that to yourself share it on social media by hashtagging
iww22 and scaling up H2O well Nation as
I mentioned each and every day this week we’re celebrating industrial water week by doing a mini interview on the theme
of the day and today here’s our interview on boilers
my lab partner today is Chuck Hamrick Jr of Eagle Consulting Chuck’s so good to
have you on this industrial water week boiler Tuesday how are you I’m doing
great great thank you for having me absolutely I I really want to say thank you for celebrating industrial water
week with us and of course we’re going to be talking a little bit about boilers today but I have to ask how are you
celebrating industrial water week well I’m looking forward to seeing everything that goes on I plan on
sending some pictures throughout the week for the different things such as Cooling and boilers and
pre-treatment and so forth so I’ll probably be in the office most of that week and uh just been boning up on some
of the stuff I need to learn and just looking forward to hearing whatever anybody else has to say that week
well awesome I look forward to seeing those pictures that you share Chuck I
was hoping that we could talk at a very high level so maybe a 30 000 foot view
of boilers and water treatment are you game sure let’s do it
so if I was just starting in water treatment this week and my boss said I
want you to go out there and I want you to look at this spoiler what would I be looking at I’d definitely be looking to
make sure that the bowels work I would also be looking at all the pre-treatment equipment to verify that it works that
I’m getting a good soft water or RO water depending on what the boiler makeup type would be I would be making
sure that each and every one of the different chemicals that I’m putting in uh be it a sulfite treatment for taking
control of oxygen uh in the boiler make sure the pumps are primed and working
correctly and there’s no leak making sure the tank for the polymer is correct
and the dosage rates are being done right and just making sure the low water cut
off would work when I open up the valve to verify that it would keep the boiler safe I think those would be some of the
main things I would do Trace Chuck Lenny asks if I was standing in front of a boiler how would I know if it was a fire
tube or a water tube well you know that’s a great question I think a lot of people especially the first week or so
that they’re in there they would not really know but you would see the different pressure gauges that would be
on the boiler and you could see how the steam trap and the steam header looked would be a very large indication on that
that’s pretty much what I look for and how would you know if it wasn’t a
steam boiler at all it was just a closed loop boiler well the difference between a steam header boiler is that the way
the steam header is designed plus the pressure gauges on it a hot water boiler would normally have a pump that you
would see that would actually be circulating the hot water through the entire system and then back to the
boiler and be reheated Chuck what would you say some of the problems are that we need to know about
as a water treater so we can make sure that they don’t happen well as I said one of the most important
things to make sure the low water cutoff Works especially on a steam boiler uh because if it’s acting like it’s staying
up meaning there’s water in the boiler and it’s not actually uh reading right
meaning it’s uh saying that the the water is high or where it’s supposed to
be but it’s really low it could cause a boiler explosion of that that’s a bad
day that’s a really bad day I know a lot of people are always confused about
priming what exactly is that farming is the violent action of the
water and the boiler in which water droplets are carried away along with the steam some of the causes could be like
number one would be like uh organic matter in the boiler water uh suspended solids in the boiler were like real high
solids um maybe soap-like substances in a boiler I know one of my large steel uh
coaters have different baths that the the steel goes through and they have
heat exchangers in there to heat it up and if the heating heat exchanger goes bad then the silk compound will come
back to the boiler and that causes a real mess High alkalinity can do it
operating boiler has steam pressure below the design pressure too high of water level in the boiler which will
encourage priming especially with the load changes from low to High when they’re going uh from a low fire to high
fire and you have all that surface tension on the top of the boiler it could carry out like a blanket and have
water going throughout the system now chuck with priming is that typically meaning the boiler is undersized for the
load that it’s demanded from not necessarily but it can be as I
mentioned it’s a lot of it probably could be where you get some impurities
coming back process contamination maybe coming back from your process as I mentioned such as like oils uh soaps
High alkalinity and and as you just mentioned operating boiler at a steam
pressure below the design pressure too high of water level in the boiler which
will encourage priming especially when the load changes from low to high well how about foaming why does a boiler
foam well boiler water carryover is the main contamination of the steam before the
water solids if the bubbles or the frost actually build up on the surface of the
boiler water and pass out what the seed this is called foaming and it’s caused by very high concentration of solids in
the boil water maybe not blowing boiler down properly or having a skin surface blow down is generally believed however
that specific substance such as Oculus oils fats greases certain types of
organic matter and suspended solids are particularly conductive to foaming in
theory uh suspense collecting the surf for film surrounding the steam bubble
and make it tougher the steam level therefore resists braking and builds up
foam it’s believed that the fires are suspended solid or particle the greater
their flexion in the bubble which means they have a better chance to lift out of
the boiler and head off towards the lows and the process and that gets us to our really big
problem that both the two areas we were just discussing lead us to which is
carryover why is carryover such an issue well it’s because of the fact that the
carryover contains a lot of Border Water solid from the chemistry that we put in
to the solids building up like calcium carbonate and the calcium itself
magnesium other things that come in with the makeup water which then can go out
into the steam header and because then the steam is extremely hot those particles come out of solution and
formed to the wall and I’ve literally seen a four inch steam header that was
had a lot of carryover taking place in this particular account not mine but
went down from four inches down to an inch because of all the carryover that
was taking place you know I always look at it that in addition to that you know Steam on its
worst day is 1150 BTUs where water on its best day is 180 BTUs so we don’t
want water in the steam we want steam in the steam because that’s what’s doing the work for us and a lot of times that
can cause more priming or surging or all that stuff because we’re actually not getting we’re getting what they call wet
steam very good point so with with wet steam have you found that there’s a a
better determining factor that you are going to get wet steam than another well as we said if our conductivities
are too high uh also if you’ve got older boilers that the things separator in
them are are getting quite uh brittle or or non-existent in some cases and uh
seeing High conductivity readings coming back from your condensate would be a
strong indication of a carryover taking place which as you state would be causing wet Steam and not getting all
the energy out of that steam that you wanted to get but you’re still using all the uh propane or coal or whatever your
fuel usage is to be able to be used up inefficiently
I know a lot of water treaters especially if they’re running phosphate programs they want to run a higher
alkalinity as an insurance policy so to speak that’s true some people will see
carryover and specifically wet steam are foaming all of those if they have too
high of an alkalinity what’s your opinion on that well I don’t know if there’s an opinion
on that for me because I’ve seen that happen and uh you know so I think you
know that’s one important things you need to watch over your conductivity you need to watch make sure what your
outlines are to keep them in the best control range to prevent that carryover
or priming or missing as some people might say because all those solids that
go out in the same line can cause you problems throughout the rest of the Border system even to the point is some
of the crystals that are being formed breaking loose and eventually coming back to your seawater tank and then
through your seawater pumps and shearing a lot of your some colors and your seals
and so forth into your seawater pumps Chuck there are some YouTube videos I
think you’ve seen them have you seen what spyrex Sarco did looking inside a boiler
well in 42 years of water well actually you know 40 years in water treatment I would say I probably have but I might
not remember what you’re getting at I’ll try to see if I can get those videos on our show notes page but what spiric
Sarco did is they took each one of these issues and they replaced one of the flanges on the boiler with a piece of
glass and they videoed each one of these things so you can actually see happening
everything that we’re talking about here you can actually see that foam building
on each other you can actually see what happens with the boiler slowing down when the feed water pump comes on and
how the boiling stops and it has to work itself back up again I’ll see if I can get permission to put those on the show
notes page it’s just cool that you can actually it’s almost like you shrunk yourself down and you can look inside
the boiler it’s very powerful to to see those things because it brings them to life oh man visuals like you know one of
the main things that people will need to be able to understand and get things into their mind and be able to retain
them for many years to come Chuck you are one of the Masters at
selling water treatment what is one of Chuck Hamrick Jr’s tips on selling water
treatment if somebody has a boiler well um one making sure you do everything
thoroughly we do a complete audit of a system before we even talk to someone
about boiler we do get an eagle engineering because of the long years that I’ve been in the business you get a
lot of recommendations and referrals so that makes the selling a little easier but we go through a step process of what
we’re going to do by doing a survey and then coming back with a thorough report and then answering a lot of their
questions we tend to ask more questions for the client to be able to answer so
that they feel like they’re a major part of it and uh we just then try to
befriend them get to know them better and leave it in the hands of the Lord
for allowing the sales process to work through our advantage Chuck thank you
for coming on scaling up H2O and sharing boiler Tuesday with us thank you trace
front Nation Chuck Hamrick is one of the people that I first met when I got involved in leadership at the
association of water Technologies and he is just a tremendous individual he is a
member of the rising tide Mastermind and he just shares so much with the group and gives so much good advice if you do
not have people in your Arena that you can ask questions to
you’re missing out so I don’t know if that’s a mastermind I don’t know if that’s a mentor whatever that means to
you life is too short to do it alone and water treatment is just too darn hard to
do it alone you need to make sure that you have people in your life that make
you better and you make them better so I urge you to figure out what that means
to you and act on it and if something you need to act on is you did not get
enough Chuck Hammer today well don’t worry we just interviewed Chuck Hamrick on episode 271 so by all means go listen
to that and you can get more Chuck Hamrick still not Nation I hope you are
enjoying this 2022 installment of industrial water week I hope you are
celebrating I hope you’re enjoying boiler Tuesday and I hope that you’re enjoying every
single new episode that we release this week we do that is our gift to you to
make sure that you have something to unwrap under the industrial water week tree each and every day this week and I
hope you look at this industry as a gift I know it’s been a gift to me sometimes
it’s a gift I wish I would have kept the receipt on so I could have returned but I have learned so much being an
industrial water Trader and it’s led me to so many wonderful experiences so many
wonderful people it definitely is a gift I hope you look at it this way way and I
hope you also realize that one day you will have to take that gift and you will
have to re-wrap it and you will need to give it to somebody else but it’s not
going to be the same gift it’s going to be embellished with all of your
experiences I can’t wait until you give that gift to
somebody else happy boiler Tuesday everybody here is
an encore presentation of detective H2O in the case of the standing
welcome to detective H2O the case of standing
the rain ran Serpentine paths down the windows of the rusty blue Ford as Herbert Henry oxendine Pi cwt set
waiting on Johnny Keelan to open the side Powerhouse door of pork belly’s processing
when the lanky man’s Shaggy had popped out the water detective made a run for it dodging raindrops best he could
shaking buckets of water from his coat detective H2O said I’m here so what’s
going on Johnny I got here as fast as my bald tires would slide me glad you made it detective H2O these boilers aren’t
doing good right now the connectivity is through the roof higher than my grandma that time she ate the special brownies
how high well she danced on the tables at the nursing home not your grandma the
boiler connectivities they’re over 10 000 microsiemens the connectivity meter is pegged out
detective H2O whistled that is high what’s happening any idea
none but the RO permeate storage tank is at 1500 microsiemens too how’s that
possible City water is only a few hundred microsiemens and the RO drops it down to less than 10 typically it’s a
real head scratcher this one is and you don’t feed any alkalinity booster or anything to the RO permia storage tank
do you no nothing like that how about your dechlorination feed Upstream of the RO is it malfunctioning
and grossly over feeding no I thought of that already it has the same setting as always I even watched
and listen to the pump seem the same as always as it pumped away checking the RO feed water conductivity after the
pre-filters was the same as always too it’s a mystery don’t you return condensate to this Ro permeate storage
tank too I’ve always said you should rename this tank the RL permi and condensate storage tank
yes we do said Johnny as the thought slowly dawned upon him follow me Johnny
said the water detective as he led the way through the Maze of pipes and equipment
[Music] five minutes later he stood in front of the condensate polishers picking up the
water treatment log sheets detective H2O saw that unit number two had come online just a few hours ago
what is a detective can we put this unit into manual regeneration right now
uh yes but it just came online this morning it shouldn’t be anywhere near
time for a regeneration I realized that just humor me a little okay here goes
unit number one coming back online unit number two going offline is
starting the backlash sequence the water detective stood there beside Johnny watching the Regeneration water
flow to the drain the backwash stopped and the brine draws started the brine
level dropped as expected then the slow rent step started aha exclaimed
detective H2O uncharacteristically quick go get that connectivity meter you use
Johnny ran off quick as a whip and returned shortly after with a black analog connectivity meter what are we
going to measure there’s no water coming out I know that’s just as I suspected
just wait several minutes later water flowed to the drain started again as the
faster inch step started detective H2O took the connectivity meter and measured
the fast rents each minute for the 15 minutes of the rinse that’s it fix that
valve right there that’ll fix your boiler connectivities wait what why that valve how will that
fix the boilers as you saw no water was flowing during the slow rinse step the
valve must not be functioning properly since the kind I say polisher did not go through a slow rinse all the salt and
any exchanged ions did not get rinsed out of the polishing vessel even though it went through a faster inch step the
connectivity only got down to three thousand microsiemens at the end of this regeneration
when unit number two comes back online it will be feeding this High conductivity water straight to the RO
permeate storage tank with the next stop being the boiler system we found our culprit while detective H2O let me check
out that slow wrench valve sure enough the valve is not functioning properly and was rebuilt with increased
blow down and a little time the boiler conductivities in Ro permeate storage tank connectivity returned to normal
a week later as detective H2O was setting at his oak desk listening to the
rain and thunder his phone rang once twice three times before he answered
foreign detective H2O here the best water
treater this side of the Ohio solving water problems drop by drop what you got detective this is Marty Cochran down at
Pork belly’s processing I got a bone to pick with you this bill you sent is outrageous
Johnny tells me you were here for only an hour stood looking at one piece of equipment took a few readings and left
why would you charge such an outrageous fee for only that well ten dollars of the bill was for the
gas to get to your plant see my Ford is a little gas hungry the rest isn’t just
for standing there as he said the rest is for knowing where to stand you’re welcome
[Music]
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 treater this
site of the Ohio solving water problems drop by drop foreign
[Music]