The following transcript is provided by YouTube, mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode click HERE.
[Music] foreign [Music]
Nation one of my favorite things about the rising tide Mastermind is a session
that we do called a full cup and a full cup is where we bring a tip or a trick
to each other that can really help improve our regular day-to-day and a few
months back Eric Russo member of The Mastermind and has been on the podcast several times he brought to us the
rocket book folks the rocket book is amazing the rocket book allows you to
take notes just like you would on any other notebook but it has a scanning
feature that turns what you write into searchable text it makes your notes able
for you to find this was a game changer for me and I know it can be a game
changer for you we have an affiliate deal worked out with the rocketbook folks so you can go to scalingup h2o.com
forward slash rocketbook and you can receive 15 off your first order of
twenty dollars or more
welcome to scaling up H2O the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems my name is
Trace Blackmore welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast Nation I am always so
happy when I hear from listeners of course we call all of the listeners of our podcast the scaling up nation and it
just warms my heart when somebody says that they listen to this podcast and
they’ve actually done something that has been inspired from this podcast let’s
face it this job can get very routine we
do things very formulaically and that can become very boring in fact that’s
how most industrial water Traders get burnout they don’t challenge themselves
to think differently they don’t challenge themselves to do something
differently and folks if you did not know this well one you haven’t listened to this podcast but here’s what I’m
getting ready to tell you this is not a boring job this is a job that can take
you wherever you will allow the job to take you it should never be boring if it
is boring that is telling you you are doing this job wrong this is not a wash
rinse repeat job this is a job where you can do your work in any fashion you see
fit and sometimes changing up how you do your work allows you to see things
differently now if you know all the things that you need to complete when you are servicing an account why do them
in the same order every time why take your samples in the same place every time why talk to the same people every
time now true there are some people you have to talk to every time that you go there but I I guarantee if you talk to a
line worker you’re going to find out more information about the equipment that they are dealing with more than
anybody else that you talk to in that plant so I’m just going to challenge you
the next time you go to an account go ahead and try to do it a little bit
differently what did you do last time how can you get the same result but a little bit different action to get there
and just doing that makes the account a lot more exciting and then you can start
adding things that are value adds to you and your customer now those are things
that you may not do each and every time that you were there but when you are there you do one thing just a little bit
different and then by the end of the year you’ve done 12 value ads and I
promise when you have that account review meeting and you talk about all the value added that you have brought to
to that account that conversation is going to go a lot easier you’re going to
feel a lot more confident about having that conversation because you are bringing extra value and you’re having
more fun in the process so challenge yourself to do something different I
know you will appreciate it we’re Nation a lot of you are doing something different by checking out all
of the different things that we’ve got going on in our industrial water treatment organization So within that we
have so many groups and so many conferences and how are you ever supposed to keep all of those straight
well my fine team at scaling up H2O is your answer to keeping all of that chaos
straight we have hundreds of conferences that are going on over the year how do
you possibly know which one you need to attend and what is happening when will you go to
scalinguph2o.com you go over to our events page and my team has got everything laid out for you so you can
find out where you should be spending your time to learn more information and
meet new people so here are a few things that you might want to put on your calendar May 16th through 19th in Boise
Idaho the national pre-treatment Workshop is taking place and this is
something where pre-treatment professionals might want to take advantage of so if you are dealing with
pre-treatment this is all about pre-treatment and how the different
Technologies are coming out they have different workshops and training all around pre-treatment to find out more
about this event hosted by the National Association of Clean Water agencies you
can go to scalingup h2o.com and go to our events page also the water
environment Federation and International Water Association is having their process engineering conference June 6th
through 9th in Portland Oregon this is where Innovations and process engineerings and design
allows people to come together to learn new practice and Innovations this comp
will focus on a wide range of topics including resource recovery treatment
efficacy efficiency enhancements as well as improved operation and monitoring
tools through the water Community if this sounds like something you want to learn more about go to scalinguph2o.com
and go over to our events page the American Society for healthcare
engineering is having their conference August 6th through 9th in San Antonio Texas of course ashy is the conference
that brings together thousands of Health Care Facility professionals to learn about new developments in the field
network with others and find solutions to their challenges as she’s having that
again August 6th through 9th in San Antonio Texas and we will have all of that information about that conference
on our show events page Nation I love it when people go to these events and then
they write back to us and they let us know that they really got some thing out of it and several people said they
wouldn’t have even known about it had it not been for the scaling up H2O podcast we appreciate information like that we
try to put information out there to the scaling up nation and we are so glad
that the scaling up nation is using it something else that the scaling up
nation is using is the ability to get a
little bit smarter each and every week with our friend James McDonald
hello and welcome to the periodic water table with James where we think and learn about water chemistry drop by drop
please use your week to search online ask your colleagues or even pick up a
book to learn more about each week’s periodic water table topic if you do at
the end of the year you’ll be 52 water chemistry smarter so let’s raise the water table of
knowledge together and get started today’s topic is
orthophosphate let’s get the basics out of the way first what’s the chemical formula of orthophosphate
is it an anion or cation even more complex is whether it is
considered an anotic or cathodic corrosion inhibitor which is it why are phosphates used in boiler
systems what concentrations of orthophosphate are used in Cooling and boiler systems
can orthophosphate be present in makeup water if so why and how could this
impact the cooling and boiler systems how do you test for orthophosphate
is orthophosphate the same as polyphosphate or organophosphate how does pH impact the effectiveness of
orthophosphate does phosphate react with calcium
remember knowledge is power and taking the time to learn more about water chemistry each week will help make you a
force to be reckoned with be sure to post what you learn to social media and tag it with hashtag water
table23 and hashtag scalingup H2O I look forward to learning more from you
well I thank you James always good to have a brand new segment each and every
week and Nation I have to tell you James was one of the first people that I collaborated with when I was thinking
about starting scaling up H2O six years ago James was a huge support in helping
me start the very first episode and of course now he’s a vital staple of the
show helping all of us in the scaling up Nation get a little smarter each and
every week by challenging what we think we know about things we use each and
every day well when it comes to challenges I love our interview today
and simply put without water we do not have a job without water we don’t have a
life today’s guest is going to challenge How We Do waste water and as I just
alluded to probably one of the biggest calls to action I have ever heard on the
scaling up H2O podcast here’s the interview [Music]
today is Dr Rakesh govin Dr Rakesh welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast
how are you today sir I’m doing fine thank you so much well I want to thank you for your presentation that you gave
a few months back in Vancouver for the association of water Technologies and that’s what our talk is going to be
about today uh maybe talking a little bit more about some of the things that you brought to our community but before
we do that do you mind telling the scaling up Nation a bit about yourself so basically I’m a professor of chemical
engineering at the University of Cincinnati that’s where I’m employed right now my work has been mainly in chemical engineering and in particular
about biological treatment of Wastewater so I’ve been working with the US EPA that is across the street from the
University of Cincinnati and doing research and development work on different kinds of wastewater treatment
systems and their benefits and disadvantages as well and that’s what
your talk was about so today’s going to be about waste water and when it comes to waste water if we were to look at how
the entire world is doing waste water what do you have to say about that are
we doing it right are we doing it wrong what do we need to know so I think that the majority of Wastewater that we are that’s created by
in domestic you know sources as well as an industry it is being treated in a
centralized treatment plant and so what we have is a a huge network of sewer
lines that are under the ground that convey the Wastewater from every house every industry typically it goes into a
centralized treatment plant that is treating the water and once it treats the water it is then put into a river or
into a lake or into a some kind of a water body that can assimilate that water that huge quantity of water that
we have collected the problem is that most of the wastewater treatment plants are emitting their treated water into a
river that ends up in the ocean and that ends up making salt water and this water
then never comes back from where it came from so we are actually depriving the
land of the groundwater that is being used to create the Wastewater so with that is it your proposal that we
abandon or are eventually rebuild centralized plants or or do away with
them so now we’re treating it at the location where it’s being created
yes I think that the future of wastewater treatment is decentralized treatment that is treat the water in the
local area where it’s coming from and then essentially put the water back in the ground where it came from and that
is essential that if we don’t regenerate the groundwater table then our grandchildren our great-grandchildren
will have no water to live with and without water there is no life there is no population there is no jobs there is
no economy and I think the world has been doing all this time with the centralized treatment plants of the
sewer lines is taking groundwater and putting into the ocean as salt water and
it the water never comes back so the groundwater table has been declining on on the worldwide scale and there is no
coming back so it is it is basically the entire world as far as Wastewater is concerned is driving on a one-way Street
and some Nations will get to the end of the street sooner than others because they have a higher population density
and and some Nations will take longer time but it is based basically expected
that within the next 10 years next decade that we are living through we’ll see many many nations run out of water
groundwater table and essentially then people will have to move and this is going to generate political instability
as well as chaos in many of those countries here I live in Atlanta Georgia if you
buy an older home it’s got a septic system and the newer homes they’re all
connected to this the centralized Wastewater facility did they get it wrong there should every system have
stayed a septic system no so I think that the decentralized approach is the right approach if we had
taken decentralized we would have a more reliable system we would have multiple treatment plants behind every house
essentially or behind every industry we would not have this huge network of sewer lions that are very expensive to
maintain I mean I’m I’m sure that Atlanta is going to spend millions of dollars hundreds of millions of dollars
to maintain the old sewer Alliance that are now broken because of roots are penetrating the swirl lines and that is
a budget that no Metropolitan civil Authority has right now so decentralized
is the right approach should have been the right approach unfortunately the septic tank which is a decentralized
system and that puts the water back on the ground is not capable of treating the water adequately so it is the the
fact that the septic tank is very primitive it does not treat the water it separates the solids only and then the
ground is then given the job the ground meaning the soil is given the job of treating the water and unfortunately
that soil is on unable to treat the water adequately in terms of Ruin
nutrients and pharmaceuticals and other compounds that we have in this water and that is where the problem comes in so
our decentralized is the future it is not a septic tank definitely because it is not capable with the ground is not
capable of treating the water adequately as we are now seeing today in terms of
the contaminants and in terms of what we are trying to treat from this water can you explain what the ideal
decentralized system looks like the ideal decentralized system would be an advanced treatment system it could be
a biological system it could be electrochemical system and it basically will do the job of the centralized
treatment but in a box in a smaller box and it will also treat the water to a
greater extent than centralized treatment is doing right now so it’ll remove the nutrients to the to the very low extent so we don’t end up with
nutrients in nearby water bodies right now for example in the in the area most of the population by the way is living
in coastal areas and the septic tanks and coastal areas are contaminating the
groundwater and the water that’s going the ground is coming into the bay areas and it is causing algal blooms so
beaches are getting close because of Earth warming and because of nutrients in the in the water is causing the the
emergence of algal blooms that make the water toxic so this is a problem that we are seeing on a worldwide scale not just
in the U.S but all the entire planet in general and so essentially an idealized
uh the real decentralized system an ideal system would be one that is behind the house that is more advanced than a
septic tank much more advanced than a septic tank it treats the water completely it takes all the nutrients does the biological treatment of the
contaminants and the Pharmaceuticals and then essentially puts the water that is now purified and disinfected into the
ground where it percolates to the ground it doesn’t get treated there it’s just burglars to the ground so it’s hydraulic
conductivity rally that we’re looking at and it goes into the groundwater table where then it is a available for future
Generations so change is hard everybody is used to having a centralized plant what is a
plan to move to a more decentralized type of operation
so basically at least in the US we know that about 25 percent of the population is currently relying on a septic tank
and I think that as we emerge from the septic tank and go beyond it we want to
see their separate tanks to be replaced by the advanced treatment systems that are able to treat the water adequately
and disinfect the Water behind the house and put the water back in the ground like like the septic tank is doing right
now but we’re not treating the Water by the soil bacteria we’re actually putting the water in the ground to go back to
the groundwater table from where the water came so essentially we’re looking at at least the 25 percent of the
population moving from the septic tank into an advanced treatment systems
rather than going down the route of connecting to a sewer line which is what a lot of cities are trying to do because
what they will end up doing is they’re going to burden future generations with basically a very low level of
groundwater which would be unusable and number two is that they would put a very
expensive proposition in future generation to be able to even repair the
sewer lines that are being laid in the ground today can you give us any examples where municipalities are using these types of
systems yes I think that it is uh you know essentially necessity is the mother
invention so many municipalities that are unable to provide a shoreline connection as the cities are growing and
they’re growing outwards as Suburbia is moving is growing in this case many municipalities are unable to connect
those houses to shorelines because they don’t have the money to lay more so Alliance and and to have more treatment plants in this case so essentially by de
facto those cities and those towns and those houses are relying on basically
either a septic tank or what we are saying is they should not be doing a septic tank if you’re doing more advanced treatment and so essentially
we’re seeing already the tilting towards Advanced septic tanks behind every house
rather than a centralized connection because they can’t get a centralized connection it’s costing millions of
dollars to extend sewer lines and municipalities have no money and homeowners and Builders don’t have the
money either so that is a problem in coastal areas where the groundwater table is pretty high and it is getting
higher and higher as the ground is going in or down it is basically the sinking of the ground over time because of
enrochment because of Earth warming and so forth because of all of these things that we are seeing the use of a septic
tank in coastal areas is not effective at all because now the water doesn’t go through adequate amount of soil to get
treated so untreated water is ending up in the Bay Area or in the sea water and that is causing the algor blooms that I
mentioned to you so we’re talking about residential systems does this change at all when we talk about industry
well the industry is just a expansion of the domestic system and we need a more advanced treatment system maybe treating
you know much more water higher water flow rate and removing some other elements that may be present in that
specific industry waste water that is not present domestic in domestic Wastewater but other than that the
concept of having a decentralized treatment system that is capable of treating the contaminants in the water
is still the same concept it is basically a decentralized system that the industry has on its premises and
essentially it does the treatment locally now the two benefits to that number one is that the water doesn’t
have to go in the sewer line number two the company doesn’t have to pay money to treat the water because right now
they’re paying municipalities in many cases and number three is that they can reuse the water so they can essentially
recycle the water back to the place that they want to be able to use the water so
they can use it for non-portable uses locally in the industry and that’s that’s basically reducing the net
consumption of water what data is available where this is being used and how the water table is
responding right now there are not many Advanced septic tanks have been installed so far
one of my companies called next-gen septic is already doing that and we are already installing Advanced septic tanks
behind houses in the Northern Kentucky area I mean I’m in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is across the river
from us so we are already installing these Advanced separate tanks that are going behind houses now you know the the
question is is the groundwater table responding well it will eventually respond once many many houses do the
same thing right now the problem we’re seeing is that the municipalities and the division of water that is
controlling the permitting process in every state in in the country in this country and probably around the globe in
other areas as well they are preferring a septic tank over an advanced system and their logic is that a separate tank
has no moving Parts homeowners don’t have to maintain it you know if it fails uh there’s nothing that’ll fail in a
septic tank easily other than you know having a hole in the tank and that doesn’t happen very often so basically
they think that it is a very reliable system that they can basically install and then nobody has to do anything with
it and the homeowner doesn’t have to bother with it because the water is going in the ground it is basically uh has no moving parts so that is their
logic but however it does not treat the water adequately now the advanced septic tanks are running with electrical power
their pumps their blowers they’re moving parts that have to be maintained and if
they’re not maintained by the homeowner then eventually those systems will fail and that’s what the municipality is and
the division of waters are concerned about is that they don’t have the legal
authority to force homeowners to maintain these systems for in in a way that they keep functioning
but I think the the whole system has to change in the fact that when you buy a
car you have to maintain the car when you buy a refrigerator you have to maintain the refrigerator and I think
that that concept of having a septic tank and leaving it having no moving Parts is really not necessary division
of waters across the country which are in every state can basically require homeowners to have a maintenance
contract just like you would like to have a maintenance contract for your car or for your refrigerator or for your
heating and cooling system it is basically an engineered system will have to be maintained so the logic behind
using a septic tank because it’s got no moving Parts is really not viable logic
considering the damage a septic tanks are doing in the environment already how widely available are these types of
systems there are many companies that are manufacturing Advanced septic tanks
besides connection septic and those systems are being installed in many places the general logic from every
division of water that I have talked to across the country is that if a septic tank is unacceptable because there’s not
enough land or the soil doesn’t percolate the water adequately then we
will allow an advanced septic so it’s a basically the advanced septic tanks are Advanced systems in other words are only
allowed when a septic tank cannot be used or the land is sloping you cannot have a in a soil field and a sloping
land or in a coastal area where maybe there is the water table is too high and
that is you know happening in majority of coastal areas across the country basically in that case they’re allowing
an advanced septic system to go in but I think that the the idea of a septic tank
being in the default system of Choice by the division of waters the very people who permit these systems is I think
flawed so let me ask say I’m listening to this podcast and I’m building a home
and this sounds very interesting to me I want to do my part everything makes sense and I go apply for a license
what’s the likelihood that my local municipality would approve it so basically I think the current
situation is that the local municipality will say okay now why is it that the septic tank cannot be used you might say
okay uh I don’t have enough land or the land doesn’t percolate the water adequately or basically it is got too
much sand in it doesn’t have enough soil uh or there are too many rocks I mean things like that then the division of
waters will say okay we’ll give you a permit for advanced septic system what I’m saying is that that is flawed logic because I think the advanced septic
system should be used even when a septic tank can be applicable because of the fact that it does not treat the water
adequately and it does damage to the environment over long term so that’s the whole logic behind it and the other
advantage that Builders have or homeowners have is they don’t need an acre of land or half an acre of land
sitting there as a field that is treating the Wastewater because that is
land that they can use and other people can be living on the land or they can use the land themselves it is a wastage
of land and in many countries with the population Nest is very high this is not even possible
where does aeration fit into all of this so aeration is a very Central you know
basically step in the treatment process you know I mean the the biological treatment system and it needs dissolved
oxygen and we aerate the water to put dissolved oxygen into the water so as I mentioned earlier aeration consumes more
than 50 percent of the energy it takes to treat Wastewater whether centralized or decentralized doesn’t matter if it’s
an advanced treatment system it has aeration system in it and this is a necessary step in any biological
treatment uh system that you can adopt now if you have an electrochemical treatment of course there is no need for aeration at that point but I’m in most
of the systems that we are looking at for domestic Wastewater are biological treatments and they require aeration as
a as a important step if I recall from your paper the size of
the bubble matters can you speak on that yes so I think that the traditional
thinking was that if we have large bubbles the bubbles would mix the water which is good for biological treatment
it would actually be good to mix the water as the bacteria is treating the water but the the efficiency of oxygen
transfer the amount of oxygen that goes into the water in this case is very small because the surface here is not
very large so people have said okay if the large bubble is not good because although it mixes the water it doesn’t
have enough efficiency of oxygen transfer let’s go to smaller Bubbles and so they went down to smaller size I’m
talking of smaller bubbles meaning from three or four millimeter size they went down to one millimeter size and those
were fine bubble editions and they had more surface area but the efficiency of oxygen transfer from the air to the
water from the bubble to the water was typically less than five or six percent all right so this is where the
technology variation is was moving and then people said well wow if the micro if fine bubbles are doing that right why
don’t we go to even smaller Bubbles and then came the Nano bubbles these are basically sub Micron size less than one
micron in size as opposed to millimeters that is fine bubble Direction so they went to very small bubbles and of course
very small bubbles have very high surface area I mean there are thousands of times higher surface area so people
thought well that’s even better because now these bubbles are going to put oxygen in a more efficient manner and
that was true the smaller the bubble size the higher the oxygen transfer efficiency the problem with Nano bubbles
is that their buoyancy is negated by the weight and so they don’t rise as normal
bubbles rise through the water and they spend hours in the water the problem with that is that 21 of air is oxygen
and 79 is nitrogen and so the oxygen goes into the water but the nitrogen
basically does nothing for us it does not help in biological treatment these bubbles keep in the water for hours and
they become nitrogen Bubbles and they are useless the occupying space in the reactor and they are doing nothing in
terms of biological treatment so what happens is when you go to nanobubbles although the efficiency is much higher
although the bubble spans are much longer time of course hours as opposed to seconds in the case of fine population uh it’s basically not good
because it stays in the water too long and they also have a negative charge on
the surface so they don’t merge together and to make bigger bubbles you know and this negative charge repels the Nano
bubbles from each other and they stay in the water they keep moving around they lower the density of water because when
you mix air and water air is a very low density of a thousand times less than water so the net density goes down as
the bubbles stay in the water and this basically allows the biomass which is the bacteria now to become basically
denser than the water and air mixture and so the biomass begins to sink at the
bottom and once the biomass sinks at the bottom it is not going to do anything for you it’s not in the water it’s not
doing the job that it’s supposed to be doing so the cells begin to sink in the water because the bug density has gone
down the and the third thing is the micro bubbles you know if they do end up hitting the biomass they end up sticking
to the biomass of the cells of the Flux Of The biomass and they begin to float to the top so these the active you know
cells that are treat the the microbial cells that are treating the water either come floating to the top or they sink to
the bottom in either case they are not effective in biological treatment so the Nano bubbles are not very good now we
move to the intermediate size which is about let’s say 30 to 65 microns so this
is much bigger than the submicron Nano bubbles these are called micro Bubbles and the micro bubbles have two major
advantages number one they also stay in the water for some time but they don’t
stay long enough to become nitrogen bubbles number two is that they do coalesce they do combine because the
negative charge is much smaller so they don’t repel each other that strongly and then as they basically combine into
bigger bubbles they rise and leave the system and that’s where the nitrogen goes it allows the nitrogen to escape
from the system because we don’t have any use for it and number three is that they have a high efficiency of oxygen
transfer so all of these benefits accrue in the micro bubble regime not in the
Nano bubbles because they actually prevent biological treatment as I mentioned the biomass for either Floats or sinks and it does not accrue with
them fine bubbles that are millimeters in size for all of us out there that treat waste
water what should we be looking for in our plants to determine if the bubbles are the right size
I think it’s a method of how you generate the bubbles the traditional method of bubbling air and water is to
have diffusers and they’re typically installed at the bottom of the tank so you have a tank that is let’s say 12 feet in depth and you have these
diffusers sitting at the bottom and there have connecting pipes and so forth and the blower is then putting air
through the diffusers and that’s how the bubbles have been created the problem with that design is that number one the
diffusers get fouled over time they get biological growth and the efficiency of oxygen absorption now from six percent
is going down to three percent and two percent so only two percent of the air that you are actually bubbling through
two percent of the oxygen in the air that you’re bubbling through is basically dissolving in the water so
you’re losing efficiency dramatically because the fouling of the diffusers now if you want to clean the diffusers you
have to empty the tank so you have millions of gallons of water or you know thousands of gallons of water in a tank
12 feet deep that you have to empty out in order to scrub the diffuse at the bottom and they’re not many one there’s
not one diffuse the many many different business so you have a massive job in terms of cleaning the diffusers and then
the whole cycle repeats itself again they get filed over time again so this is not a good method this is not a good
design at all in fact the better design would be to create the micro bubbles in the water and then have a water recycle
going on take the exit water and put it back in the inlet and in the process of recycle introduce the micro bubbles so
the micro bubbles enter the tank at the beginning from the Recycled water the water recycled helps to mix the tank so
that’s a good thing and the micro bubbles are putting dissolved oxygen in the water so that way you have no so
much diffusers you don’t have the cleaning problem you don’t have the emptying of the tank problem that you
have to go through your micro bubble generating system is outside you know in the Recycled line it’s not in the tank
and basically the micro bubbles are then coming back at the inlet through the recycle flow and so you get the best of
the Two Worlds you get the mixing of the tank because the recycle flow you get the micro bubble staying in the water
because they are going to stay longer they have a higher efficiency you have no diffusers in the tank to clean at the
bottom of the tank you don’t have to empty the tank ever to do any cleaning action and so all of these benefits from
an operating point of view from a maintenance point of view a crew with this concept of aeration
so when we’re talking about industrial wastewater treatment we’re going to have different items that we’re going to have
to get rid of that we’re just not going to have in residential treatment how does that differ and will this work
yeah I mean the treatment system will have to be made more elaborate because we have other contaminants like Metals
dissolved Metals For example like from mining Wastewater or from electroplating Wastewater that kind of thing will have
more of the toxic Metals in it that will have to be removed but the idea of decentralization has a very important
purpose right now Industries are spending too much water they’re using too much water millions of gallons of
water is being used right now by Industries and then they of course treat the water locally or in sewer lines or whatever and the water ends up in the
ocean eventually where it becomes salt water so the same problem applies for industrial res water as well because it
is a large volume of water so by treating the water locally and and doing it an adequate job of it they can reuse
the water in the local industry itself so they can bring the water back in the company they can reuse it and by doing
that their net consumption of water is going down one of the things we have to remember is that fresh water on this
planet is running out the fresh water is running out it’s not going to happen in 100 years it’s going
to happen in the next decade in many of the countries that are highly populated as I mentioned to you they’re all
traveling down a one-way Street they’ll reach the end before anybody else does and that is going to have a major upheaval on this for the population
living on this planet so the industries need to learn that lesson and that’s a
lot of Wastewater being used right now they need to conserve water and by by treating the water locally they can
reuse the water and that reduce the net consumption of water so that should be enough for people to
act unfortunately until it affects people’s pocketbook that’s when they act
I’m sure when they’re looking at separating from a centralized plant to a
decentralized plan it costs them money what’s an Roi that they can expect
I think that the ROI is going to be you know highly positive in this case and
and the reason why return investment is is going to be good for decent price treatments because by using decentralized treatment you are getting
a much more reliable system in this case remember one of the things one of the central problems we have is centralized
treatment is you’re putting all your eggs in one basket in essentially so when that plant is hit by hurricane or
by a tornado or by Rising seawater level then essentially it gets flooded in
other words when that happens your entire millions of people with Shoreline connections are cannot use their toilets
they cannot generate Wastewater because there’s no plant at the end that is working in this case and so when you get
natural disasters like earthquakes or rising sea levels or hurricanes or
tornadoes single plant is going to affect millions of people at the same time by having a decentralized system
you have a much more uh a reliable system at your hands it’s not going to kick out every house in this case and so
you have a much better chance of responding in that situation than if a centralized treatment plan goes belly up
because it has no power or basically it has not is not capable of running in Industry normally the municipalities
require a lot of testing to make sure what is released is what they will
accept and then of course there’s fines if you exceed that having a decentralized plant in the facility how
is that different so I think that the the difference is today we have sensors we have
communication capabilities that we didn’t have 10 years ago and so we can sense contaminants and water in real
time we can transmit that information to any Authority uh not only in the country but even internationally through
websites and so forth we have that capability now and so we have the capability of checking the water quality
and transmitting into the authorities on a real-time basis so the idea that you
know once upon a time we had to take a sample wait for 10 days for the analysis to come back by the time the water has
already gone into the river and has long gone into the ocean that by the time that is not what we have today so we can
because a reliable sensing and transmission NK and communication capabilities we can have decentralized
systems that authorities can check on and they can actually keep a track of
what what every decentralized system is doing actually you know and I think the job of the municipality is not to run a
decent plastic treatment plant which is what it is right now the Java municipality would be to basically sense
the performance of every decentralized plant so instead of having a giant
centralized wastewater treatment plant with an expensive collection system so are lines that I was talking about they
can have basically a monitoring system that’s monitoring the treatment systems from every house and every industry uh
in the local area or in that in that Community or whatever and then basically be able to maintain it for the Hawaii
model that is a job of the municipalities not to run a centralized treatment plant at Great expense and to
maintain the collection system and then have the disadvantage of putting the water in the ocean and the water not coming back and so forth but actually
maintain the decentralized system so homeowners don’t have to maybe even maintain the system because they pay uh
amount of money to the municipality the municipality makes a living from it the municipality then is monitoring the
system real time at the facility and then they will send somebody to repair your your decentralized plan should
something happen to it over time because it is Health moving Parts you know you have an open mic to tens of
thousands of industrial water treaters what do you want to make sure you leave
them with from this interview I think we I want to leave them with the idea that the technology of wastewater
treatment is Advanced enough today and the technology of water sensing is
Advanced enough today to be able to do a very good job on a local level thereby
reducing the rent water consumption and they should seriously look at reducing the net water consumption because fresh
water on the planet is running out and if fresh water runs out at the location
that they are actually you know have their plant their company cannot operate
as they are operating right now so their existence is at stake for them their
existence is at stake for them it is not a matter of Economics it’s not a matter is their very existence because if they
don’t get the water they cannot do what they are trying to do right now they cannot run their process so so for them
it is a matter of the very existence the fact that if they need to exist 10 years 20 years 30 years from now they have to
look at their water consumption and say well where is this water going to come from if the water table is no longer
available to us what do we do then and that is what we want to prevent I don’t think there’s ever been a bigger
call to action on this show if somebody wants to learn more about your work and
what they should be considering from this interview where should they go
so I can be found on LinkedIn very easily I can be found through Google search I’m an academic I have a
companies that I founded that are providing technology to companies as well as to domestic you know
householders in this case we are as I said next-gen septic is installing these Advanced septic systems behind people
houses as we speak right now so they can find me very easily and I think that they can contact me and I’ll be happy to
give them any more details or help them reduce their water consumption in this case as well we’ll be sure to have all
of that information on our show notes page and with your permission I’m also going to add your white paper on the
show notes page for people to research yes thank you Dr Rakesh thank you so much for coming
on scaling up H2O and sharing your knowledge with us thank you so much
[Music] several of you might have met Dr Rakesh at the recent Association of water
Technologies conference and you gotta love how passionate he is about water
and specifically that if we don’t change how we do waste water we will not have
water to waste and just simple things like retrofitting diffusers to have more
appropriately sized Bubbles and recycling the water making the systems
more efficient less waste equals less sludge and operational costs those are
decreased so a little bit of investment to do these things but then the ROI is
just so great and what I love about this is it’s challenging the status quo we’re not doing things the same way we’ve
always done them so whether you’re in this area of water treatment or not you
can just see how this touches every part of our lives and when you think just a
little bit differently with how you do things it makes the job more interesting
but it makes the job better and who knows that might be the key to saving
millions of gallons of water and we all know we have the same amount of water on
the planet that we did a million years ago but we are using water way different today we are using a lot more water and
that water doesn’t always come out as clean as when we start with it and that
is the issue so when we challenge the status quo and that’s what this industry
is all about how do we do things differently how do we do things better
so I really want to thank Dr Rakesh for coming on the scaling up H2O podcast and
I really want to thank the members that introduced me to him at the association of water Technologies conference in
Vancouver because members of the scaling up Nation are caring about the topics that we are
covering on the scaling up H2O podcast I’m meeting all of these great guests so
thank you for continuing to bring me new ideas and new guests and new questions
if you have any or all of those three please don’t keep that to yourself go to
scalinguph2o.com and go over to our show ideas page or you can leave us a
voicemail and you can tell us exactly what the question is you want us to answer right here on scaling up H2O
Nation I’ve been talking about the training programs that we have at the scaling up H2O Academy and I want to
thank so many people that are learning more about water treatment through the
scaling up Academy I’m really enjoying writing those courses and being your
instructor on scaling up Academy and I mean so much to me when you are letting me know that you’re enjoying those
courses and you feel like you’ve got a better core of foundational information
so you can go out there and be the best that you can be when you’re talking with
your customers so that of course can be found at scalingup h2o.com forward slash
Academy once again that’s scalingup h2o.com forward slash Academy and so
many people are signing up for our free cwt course where I go through awt’s uh
booklet on how to get your cwt and I let you know all the things that you need to
do in order to obtain your cwt all of that is for free and it’s my hope that
that is the Catalyst that you need to go ahead and take that course we’ll take
the course but then also schedule the exam so we’ve got a hundred question practice exam course if you like the
free course of course that’s a paid course and all of that is geared towards giving you confidence to schedule that
exam and I hope when you decide to schedule the exam you go ahead and
hashtag scaling up H2O and let us know what that date is we will all be in support of you when you take that so
valuable examination now maybe you’re in another field of industrial water treatment and there’s another
certification that you need to go after I urge you to do that because when you
get those professional certifications it makes you feel so much more confident about yourself it allows you to speak
differently to your customers because you know you have the backing of that certification and allows your customer
to know you’ve done more than other people and you have their back because
you’ve done that extra work so again that’s scaling up h2o.com forward slash
Academy and if you’re taking the certified water technologist we’ve got all the information that you need right
there Nation we’re also going to have a brand new episode for you next Friday so
in the meantime I hope you have a great week see you next Friday folks [Music]
foreign [Music]