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welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast
where we’re scaling up on knowledge so
we don’t scale up our
systems hello scaling up nation trace
blackmore here
the host of scaling up h2o but i’m not
alone today normally i do my intro
all by myself but i have invited back
one of our most requested guests and of
course a great friend of mine
so i’ve got mark lewis with me today how
are you mark
trace i am doing very well today well i
appreciate you helping me with my
introduction i guess you’re gonna help
me with my outro too
but as far as the introduction i thought
we could talk about a couple of things
that were going on
and one that i yours truly
have proclaimed august as legionella
awareness month you know what you and i
are going to the same conferences we’re
going to the same trainings and some of
the questions
that we get from seasoned water treaters
they should be a little further along in
their legionella knowledge
than they are and i’m not saying that to
discourage anybody from asking questions
i just don’t think that whether you or i
or people in the industry we need to do
a bigger push to get people aware
of what they need to know about
legionella so they can talk to their
customers about it
well trace you know especially 2020
being the way it is
many things are not normal and a lot of
buildings have shut down
had low occupancy low water usage
and and we need to be sure that when we
start bringing people back in
our buildings are ready to receive these
people
and so yes there’s maintenance to the
equipment that needs to be done
but there’s also awareness of the water
that’s in these buildings and so
august being legionella awareness month
is is going to be a great opportunity
to to showcase some of the things that
needs to be done
so that we are aware of some of the
potential problems
yeah i’m glad you bring up
recommissioning or reopening or
restarting i don’t even know what we’re
calling
bringing people back into the workforce
but there’s so many buildings
that are out there that have had very
low flow in their plumbing systems
and i had the privilege of working with
boma this year and doing a presentation
on that very topic
and there were very few people on that
presentation on that webinar
that were actually thinking about that
they were thinking about hand sanitizing
stations how many people are going to be
in elevators
how are we going to keep the conference
room safe but it doesn’t come to the
front of mind easily
what are we going to do about these
stagnated water systems and people are
going to come back in so
absolutely right i think we all wish
that we were a little further along than
we are
right now with the covid crisis but
we’re getting through it we are we are
well mark another thing that’s coming up
that
i know is dear to me i know it’s dear to
you is the association of water
technologies convention
and expo and it’s a little bit different
this year isn’t it it is and trace you
know i’ve been to
every convention since 2000
haven’t missed a one and and this this
year i was a little worried i was like
what’s
how are we going to handle this how you
know what’s our travel going to be like
what’s our
social distancing going to be like and i
think it finally got to the point
where some some better planning had to
be done
and some decisions had to be made and so
i want to take and uh thank the the
board of directors for
for having to make this call it’s a
tough call
but there’s just so many things we don’t
know so when you add up
everything that you know and you make a
decision on how what’s next
i think that’s what this decision had to
be made and i think making it at this
time allows us to plan for
well mark moore over the governor
actually said that gatherings of 50
people
or more were illegal so they had no
choice
well i know there’s at least 50 people
who come to the convention just to
meet and greet with me and you know just
just to make sure i’m doing okay
so that would have been impossible to
have at least at least 50 people coming
just for you
i want to say we’re about 1200 plus
every year when we get together as a
convention
so i’m going to have tom brand on uh you
of course know tom very well you used to
work for tom
he’s the president of awt now and
they’ve done a lot of things
because people like you and i we’re
going to miss the convention we’re not
going to be able to see each other in
person
and they want to make sure that they’re
bringing that experience
as well as they can online where we can
still network
we can still see those great papers that
are presented and we can even connect
with
the vendors that we get to see each and
every year
i’m going to have on the show notes page
a demo where you can see
what they’re doing so you can get
registered and here’s the thing
awt has asked people like you and me
to get the word out as best as we can
because they’re trying to add all these
bells and whistles to the online
convention
but they can only do that if people sign
up so they’ve
lowered the convention registration
price
so as i mentioned earlier we normally
have about 1200 people but now it’s
going to be more affordable
it’s going to be different but hopefully
more people can attend
and you get a taste of what it’s like to
go to an awt convention so maybe instead
of 1200 maybe we’ll have 12 000 this
year
we just don’t know the uh the
registration fees were lowered to 420
per person for the first two attendees
of a company and these are for
membership
awt member fees and then once you reach
two the third member is only 150
so that’s that’s great great savings for
multiple people to
experience the conference this year yeah
i was speaking to somebody in our
mastermind group and
they registered all 25 employees in
their company
and he said it was actually less to
register
everybody in their company this year
than it would have been to send
two employees to the conference because
he doesn’t have airline he doesn’t have
hotel he doesn’t have meals
so think about that when you’re making
your budget
that you’re gonna save a whole bunch
this year and maybe you can offer
this to many more in your company than
you normally are able to
and it’s very flexible as well we can do
it from our home our office
and attend the sessions that we want to
attend just like if we were there on
site
mark a question that i’ve received from
a couple of people is their fellow
certified water technologists and they
want to know if they can still
receive their certification credits
and the answer is yes but they’re going
to track to make sure that you’re going
to the things that you’re supposed to
absolutely you’re supposed to uh you’ve
got to check into the site
uh all three days so you you can’t just
um
you know log in once and say oh i’ve
paid my money and so i’ll receive my
ceus
you’ve got to sign in each day to uh to
obtain the ceus
mark somebody was calling me a couple of
months ago and they were getting very
close to
their end date for their certified water
technologist designation
and they were upset because they were
supposed to go to cleveland this year
to get their credits and of course as
you know
we did not go to cleveland this year and
that created
a bit of a problem for this individual
so my advice with that is never wait to
get your credits at the last moment i
mean who knew that we were going to
close the country down we closed the
world down
so i don’t think you can ever plan for
that but if there’s
any advice that we can take from that
situation
it’s we’ve got five years to do it make
sure when your fourth year is coming up
that you got all your ces that that you
need because you
just never know what’s going to happen
yeah you know and i was certification
chair for a number of years
uh years ago as well and the uh
the committee has continued to make
re-certifying
not easy but as convenient as possible
we’ve got a ton of webinars
on the awt website that you can you can
watch
those are worth one ceu there’s uh
for reviewing papers for for the
convention it’s worth the ceu
uh and then again for attending the the
the conference there’s another five ceus
right there so
uh take advantage review the application
as far as what can be done to
to ensure you’ve got all of your ceus to
renew that
and don’t let it lapse and of course the
big one is going to technical training
which we only had one this year and
that’s 15.
it’s five for the fundamentals and
application class that you and i
teach and uh there’s really no reason
you shouldn’t get your ceu
and get it early absolutely well mark
i’m glad you’re here i’ve had a lot of
people
give me questions either on the website
send me emails
all the ways that people ask me
questions on this show
and they want to know about the not so
mainstream
water treatment methods that are out
there of course we’ve talked a lot about
the
the four issues that water treatment can
solve
we should we should reduce corrosion we
should take care of scaling microbial
fouling and general dirt and debris
but there are lots of different ways to
do that normally
we’ll talk about chemistries but that’s
not the only way to skin that proverbial
cat and i know mark you’ve got some
experience
in some of those so i thought you could
come on today
and help me help the scaling up nation
with some of the questions that they
have about some of these
lesser known or lesser used technologies
we know trace i was um asked to put
together a presentation
for mission critical centers with data
centers 7 by 24 centers that
that must run all times and and they
didn’t want just a standard water
treatment uh
presentation so what i put together was
was a paper called
newer innovative technology in water
treatment suited for mission critical
centers
and so what i did is i i backed up and
and i looked at everything in general
that has
came out in the last 10 years or so to
to give people an example of what’s out
there because
if they’ve just been exposed to the same
old program over and over and over again
but then they don’t know and so you know
when you
when you’ve done this when you when you
look at the program and what
all is available you got to understand
that
in mission critical buildings you know
33
of their power goes to their their hvac
their their chillers
and when you look at buildings
themselves you know
it’s uh i think it’s the number’s a
little bit lower than that but i still
think it’s
well over 25 of your utility bill
is for your chiller and so for
conditioning your space so when you’re
talking about
taking care of that you’re talking about
a huge portion of your
utilities every month and so what can we
do
to take care of that and um
and you’re right you know we’ve got to
control corrosion prevent scale control
microbiological growth
and that dirt and debris we take care of
all of that and
and by doing that we are going to ensure
our equipment
lasts because not only we want it to run
efficiently
we want that equipment to last a long
time
mark i remember reading an article
almost 20 years ago
talking about how the chiller is the
piece of equipment that uses the most
electricity
in any setting and i guess you could
probably test that if you’re in some
specific process but definitely
in a regular building or the equipment
that the light industrial market works
on normally the chiller is one of the
largest consumers of electricity so
you’re right
if we can make that more efficient we
can definitely reduce our customers
overall energy bill
and trace you know that i’d love to talk
about i think you’ve even adopted it
is the saying that you can’t fix a
mechanical problem
chemically and you can’t fix a chemical
problem mechanically
and so you know if we look at some of
our equipment suppliers today
uh our equipment suppliers have done a
great job updating their
uh controllers and pumps and things like
that and so we do need to take a look
at what we’re doing uh what type of
equipment are we using to control the
program because
we’re not there every day our controller
constantly monitors
the system and it makes changes as
it needs now we have we have controllers
that
are very inexpensive you may spend a
thousand dollars for a controller
and you have certain items that you can
monitor and control
you may say i want to spend ten thousand
dollars for a controller
but you have so many more options and
flexibility and you can really dial that
program
in even to the point where it turns on a
chemical pump or turns it off
sends you an alarm because of a high
connectivity or a low connectivity
a low drum level you may be running low
on a product
it sends you an email so when that
controller communicates back to you
it’s like putting another person on site
and and we don’t always have extra
people on site these days
and so when we’re when we’re looking at
these things
and you know what type of equipment we
should use you got to be able to look
and say that
we need a little extra help
controlling our program because you guys
don’t have the time to do it
back when my father would service water
treatment accounts
there were several people assigned to
help him all they did
was water treatment mark i don’t think
you and i have ever
seen somebody that just had a water
treatment job in one of our accounts if
we have it’s
very few and far between so it’s a great
point
the controllers that we have there allow
us to go home and our programs still be
administered
so mark we can go into our controllers
by accessing them online
and we can get a lot of valuable data to
prepare for us coming out or if a
customer has a question we can log in
without having to drive across town
and give them advice exactly right it
definitely helps
us help them and it’s like
putting a partial person back on site
and and tracy’s even gotten to these
days to where our suppliers are
providing
sell modems and such that we don’t even
have to connect
through our customers intranet
internet so that there’s no sense of oh
you guys are going to be snooping in on
what we’re doing yeah that’s always a
fun conversation we need access to your
network
but but we don’t even have to connect to
their site and and that technology is
out there
and and the neat thing is not only can
you look at the connectivity of the of
the water you can look at the water
meter readings you can
you can install sensors that actually
measure ptsa
and that is the amount of treatment that
actually is in the system
by measuring the ptsa you know
how much product you have recirculating
in the water
you may use a orp controller
to determine your oxidant demand and
that will
basically turn on and off a chlorine
pump
that will help control your your
biological needs
so controllers are very smart these days
and they are doing real-time adjustments
as we’re there mark i received a
question not too terribly long ago
from the scaling up h2o webpage somebody
wanted to know
what ptsa stands for
so for a thousand points and the lead
paratoluene sulfonic acid
i don’t know what good that would ever
do anybody
but that’s what that stands for so now
you know
so trace not only can you have sensors
that monitor what’s going on
sometimes you may not use a sensor but
you can have
positive flow sensors or flow
verification sensors
that actually tell the controller that
liquid is moving through the pump
so not only did you think it fed you can
verify that it fit
and the one thing that i will say about
anytime you have
a a chemical feed pump guys
make sure the pump that you’re using is
compatible with the product
that you’re pumping i think that’s one
of the biggest things is
as we go in and look oh there’s a
chemical feed pump we’ll just hook it up
and not realizing that some components
are not compatible with some of the
products we feed
so take time to evaluate what’s there
and also make sure that you’re you’re
using the right pump
i won’t mention any product names but
there’s a phosphonium-based
biocide that we were one of the first to
do some beta testing on and we had a
pvc end and we
thought somebody came in there with a
hammer and just broke
all the heads i’ve had the exact same
thing happen to me
so make sure you’re looking at your
compatibility charts and
uh there’s a lot of them on there i
think every manufacturer has a
compatibility chart so that should be
the first thing
you are looking at before you’re
ordering a pump
absolutely and and the other piece of
equipment that uh can sometimes can
can help solve some problems for years
we’ve used solenoid
valves diaphragm valves you know we’ve
got these capacitor driven valves out
there these days spring loaded valves
and the nice part about those
is if you lose power they’re going to
close now the nice
there again they are full ported and
they’re going to open up
and you get a full stream that’s um that
that
is utilized for blow down uh and you
don’t have to worry about those things
plugging up
so those are some things that i guess
these capacitor driven valves have been
out for six or eight years now
and i may be wrong there but um great
little valves i’ve used them in lots of
applications i’ve had a few fail
but there again if your controller tells
you that you’ve got water flowing in it
shouldn’t be you can address that
one of the best sales calls i was ever
on a gentleman i work with his name is
chris
we were having some issues with a bunch
of debris going into
just a regular diaphragm bleed valve so
we were trying to get them to upgrade to
a spring actuator valve
and the sails demonstration was chris
grabbed a stick
as we were coming in off the street and
he put that stick
into the valve and allowed it to close
and it broke the stick and it closed the
valve
we sold that valve that day so sometimes
the customers don’t know what we’re
asking them to do
and sometimes we have to demonstrate
what we want them to do
absolutely and so understanding what
type of equipment you have on site
that’s going to control this program
regardless of what type of
program that you have is always very
important
having equipment that doesn’t function
like it’s supposed to
increases your service time and
increases
your problems down the road so guys make
sure that what you have is working like
it should
mark let me ask you this because i’m
sure there are people out there saying
if
if my customer would pay for the things
that we should have there my life would
be
a lot easier so how do we help them what
conversation should they be having with
their customers
so they do buy maybe some more robust
equipment maybe some more features
and ultimately their customer sees what
the payback is
i think that sooner or later you’ve got
to have the conversation that if you’re
always having to clean something or
you’re always having to repair something
uh throw the bug out there that you know
if we had a better controller if we had
a better valve if we had a better pump
or we had a compatible pump
we wouldn’t be making all these repairs
but
just so that you know every time we have
an upset
it’s costing you money down the road and
i think in an earlier episode we
actually put
value to issues and whether it’s lost
water some fouling indices are falling
percentages
those kind of things when you talk about
real dollars um
there again when you talk about
electronic controllers
or remote controllers when we’re talking
about
internet based controllers we had just
installed a controller
at a convention center and friday
afternoon
uh about four o’clock we received an
alarm we received a second alarm
and what happened was the makeup uh
solenoid valve stuck open and when
you’re dumping 150 to 200 gallons a
minute
overflowing the tower and everyone goes
home at four o’clock
well that that system would have
overflowed all weekend until monday
we were able to contact them they were
able to bring somebody in
made the repair and i think it saved
them six to seven thousand dollars just
at one time so it’s a great
insurance um to have
and sometimes that’s the way it’s you
know you realize it was the best
decision you ever made
as soon as it did exactly what it was
supposed to do and so
by telling people that you know we’re
not trying to spend money but we are
trying to ensure that that we can find
things or find problems as quickly as we
can
a little piece of advice that i can give
maybe to the newer water treater
is don’t just put one controller or one
piece of equipment there
something that you can do is have
multiple controllers so essentially
you’re kind of bidding against yourself
if you will you can say
we can go to this basic controller and
this is what it will do
or we can move up to this medium level
controller and these are the extra
things that it can do
and then this high level controller
these are the things that it can do
and by the way here are all the costs
that they can potentially
save you if you go with one or the other
controllers a lot of times we have to
spell
that out to them absolutely so so we’ve
talked about
different types of equipment and i’m
sure there’s there’s other types of
pumps or valves or controllers or
features but we have talked about some
of the newer stuff that’s out there
and how it works on the the mechanical
side of controlling our water treatment
program
so trace why don’t we talk about some of
the
chemistry technology that’s out there
that is being utilized today
that people may not be aware of or that
is
just becoming into the market and i know
some of these things
i don’t know everything there is about
them and i’m sure you don’t either
but we know enough that we know we’ve
got to continue to learn
and i think one of the things that we
love to say on the show that
is if you don’t know something don’t
accept that you don’t know it but
it gives you an opportunity to go out
and learn some more about it and our
suppliers are
are just tickled when you pick up the
phone and say hey let’s talk about
product x and i’m sure we’re going to
have two or three of those products
today
in our conversation so um i know
several months ago you had marity on the
show and she talked about
film forming technologies yeah that was
actually about a year ago mark
that was episodes 89 90
and 91. it was so much information it
took
three episodes to to get that
information in
and you know one of the things i’ve used
uh we’ve got it at southeastern and we
utilizing closed water systems and
boilers
i have not used it per se in a cooling
tower
just haven’t had the opportunity haven’t
had the experience
but i am looking forward to my first
cooling tower episode
with film forming technologies because i
look at it
and it looks so forgiving as long as you
maintain your residuals
mark we’ve been using filming of means
for years
well right when they were available for
boilers i think we were one of the
the first to get in with that and they
have improved quite a bit
since that time filming a means we’ve
been able
to get them to work in systems where
other things would not work maybe it was
a
feed issue or a temperature issue
or an equipment issue things weren’t
hooked up right
they gave us the ability to offer
another
type of treatment that other treatments
would have failed
i love to use them in high heat
situations they just work phenomenally
well with that the thing that we learned
early on and i thought that we had
failed
catastrophically when we used it our
very first time we opened up our very
first pail
we pumped it into the boiler we came
back the next day or the
day after that and the water was black
and chunky
oh my gosh what did we do
and one of the ways that i love to
explain film forming technology
is imagine a tadpole with a big mouth on
the end
and this tadpole loves to go and bite
into surfaces of metal
now if it’s biting into a chunk of rust
it’s going to bite on that rust and hold
on and then you’ve got this tail out on
the end and as the water passes
it puts pressure and pulls on the tail
and because that rust is is
weak it just pulls it off and another
film forming that mean is going to bite
into the section right next to it
or if there’s scale because a lot of
people don’t realize but calcium is a
metal
you’re going to bite into the calcium
and you’re going to pull that off as
well
so it’s going to clean up your your
system and so as it cleans up
and we’ll just say the boiler system
then it’s carried off to the same steam
system
and then to the condensate system and
you’re looking for a result
all the way at the end in the return
condensate of a
free residual and all along you’re
checking your iron levels and things
such as that
but if you are covering up your metal
you eliminate all of your issues that
you’re going to have there
yeah so mark what we learned is exactly
what you said
we were over feeding the product in the
beginning
actually we weren’t we were feeding it
exactly what they told us to feed
but we learned very quickly that that
was over feeding
so uh and i shared this on the episode
with marity and she confirmed it
what we now do is whatever the parts per
million dosage that we’re supposed to
have in that system
we’ll quarter it and we’ll feed one
quarter of what that maximum is supposed
to be
and we’ll come back a couple of weeks
later and we’ll increase in another
quarter and we’ll keep doing that until
we get
up to that 100 percent level and we’ve
had
far less problems when we’ve gone
low and slow with that but again when
fed properly we’ve had tremendous
results
with that type of product and as you
mentioned originally was just with
boilers
now it’s in cooling towers closed loop
systems
mark we don’t use anything else but a
means
in our aluminum containing systems
it just works phenomenal for aluminum
systems
i actually introduced a filming amines
into a system where
in less than a year they had some major
failures with some molds
and since then they have fallen in love
with the product they then they pull
them out
they they look just like they did the
day when they went in and so
it’s uh the customer loves it and so
you know when you look at corrosion
prevention you know
because you’re actually covering the
surface you know you’ve got that
that that ion that’s biting into the
metal
and it’s protecting the metal um
corrosion can occur
um it doesn’t create create a surface
where it can so minerals can stick to it
so it
actually does a great job of both the
corrosion prevention as well as the
scale prevention of the equipment
yeah marco you mentioned injection
molding and that is one of my favorite
places
to use filming amines i think i
mentioned five favorite places but
that’s one of them
people don’t really treat their molds
very well when they take them offline
they’re filled with water they’re you
know
who knows what they have in them well if
they have a filming amine product in
them
they still continue to inhibit a little
bit and i know everybody that’s done an
injection molding plant they get all
this rust in the system
whenever they put those molds back
online
i won’t say it totally prevents that but
it is so much
better it does i mean it’s it protects
the metal
so much better because it actually
adheres to the metal it’s not just
you know most people don’t realize but
you’ve got to have flow for most of our
inhibitors to work
because you’re creating a difference and
because this film forming technology
actually bites into the metal the bond
is made
that way not by a charge and so it’s
really great the way it works
i’m going to invite people to go to
episodes 89 90 and 91 to find out all
about film forming a means
meridi kabari was very gracious and
giving us
a lot of time on those products so maybe
you should check
those out mark i thought we could change
topics a little bit and look
at solid treatments yeah trace
the solid technology there again is is
nothing new
it may be new to a lot of people but
when you look at the solid
water treatment the best part about the
solid chemistry
is is that you don’t have a lot of heavy
drums to move
so we have to move around the plant you
also don’t have a lot of heavy drums to
ship
and so one of the things it does is is
eliminates
hazards on the site because you’re
taking this solid and you’re dissolving
it with with
with water from the site and making your
reservoir so as you need it you’re
making it
um you know you may have a 10 pound
block that is the equivalent to
15 or 20 gallons of of a wet chemistry
so there again when we talk about space
you know we’re taking a space of
eight inches by eight inches by eight
inches instead of a fifteen to twenty
gallon drum there
and so it’s just so much easier to have
a box of treatment versus
you know drums or pills of chemistry
around
mark i have to say my favorite way to
deliver
product is in the liquid form because i
am able to pinpoint it to the exact
dosage that i need while i’m there
and i’m just not able to do that as spot
on with the solid chemistries
so i think they’ve gotten a lot better
since
we’ve tried them out in the very
beginning it was very difficult
uh if it was hot you might get at one
dilution rate if it was cold you might
get another dilution rate
i think the manufacturers have leveled
that out quite a bit
but i’ll tell you where i absolutely
love
solid chemistry is when you have an
account where you have to climb up a
ladder
go out a hatch and then walk out on the
roof
and you know how are you going to carry
drums up there there’s absolutely no way
well you can put a couple of those solid
chemistries in a backpack
very safely go up the ladder and they
are perfect
for that situation so when my advice
is when you’re looking at the account
don’t always look at the same way you’ve
always done things there’s all these
technologies and we’re going to continue
to talk about some more
but does that allow you to do something
differently and maybe that differently
is maybe more cost effective or maybe it
is
safer or maybe like you mentioned it is
not
bringing so much product because maybe
that’s going to
put them over on their buy side
reporting whatever it is
you’ve got all these things that you can
think about that
you can provide for your customer making
you a little bit better than some other
people
absolutely and the nice thing about all
of these technologies
is our suppliers love to educate you
know
so if you have questions or you’ve never
used uh some of these technologies that
we’re talking about
call your suppliers uh today and say hey
let’s set up a webinar let’s set up a
time where we can get together and
and learn about how this works what’s
the uh you know what’s the advantages
how can i sell this
and right now because our suppliers are
kind of limited
on being able to go out and see people
because of covid19
it isn’t they have that they have the
time to do it
so if you’ve never used solid chemistry
i’d say reach out to some of our
suppliers
and and request a a meeting a webinar
and and find out all about it yeah we’ve
got some suppliers that are in our
mastermind group
and just the other day they were saying
yeah we would absolutely love to do
training because we’ve got the time
right now that’s a great point mark
absolutely mark here’s the topic that
i’m
really wanting to talk about because you
are probably one of the country’s
experts on this topic
and it’s moss we’re putting moss
in water treatment systems and it’s
actually working
tell us about that i’d like to take some
credit but
but back in 2016 in february
uh colin fraim actually did a webinar uh
new and greener water treatment
technologies through the awt
and he mentioned boss and uh it was kind
of interesting talked about some of the
the components and how it worked and
some of some of the things that he
learned about it he actually went and
visited the plant to learn about it
but our introduction i think tomos
started awt convention in san diego
and i forget exactly which year that was
but then right after that we were
introduced
at a trial that was in our area and uh
but the neat thing about moss is that
that
it is sustainable it’s renewable
it regrows and can be reharvested every
five to seven years
and then there’s multiple purposes after
its use it can be
applied to landfills it can be used as
an
oil absorbent it’ll it’ll absorb 10
times its weight in oil so if you have
other oily applications you can take
used moss and
stick it in there and it will absorb the
oil and allow you to treat that system
better down the road maybe more cheaper
or you know it can be composted be put
in the flower beds or things such as
that
so moss has been an interesting
technology to to get to know
and learn and and then find out about
mark people ask me all the time when
they’re trying to
review a different type of water
treatment program than what they’re used
to
how do they do that and i always bring
them back to that four-legged stool
the four legs of course we talked about
them earlier corrosion control
scale control microbial control and
control of
general dirt and debris so how does moss
do those things okay so let’s go ahead
and
and take the general dirt and debris off
the table because i think all of us
would agree that for the most part
the way you’re going to remove most of
your general dirt and to bring it
through is some type of a filtration
mechanism and
and so so you know we’re not going to do
that with moss but
you’re going to do that with some type
of infiltration um
i think the easiest place to start here
would be a
mineral deposition and what people don’t
understand is that
is that the the moss actually
absorbs some cations so your calcium
magnesium
irons and coppers it absorbs those and
precipitates those
and so therefore it lowers the hardness
levels in the water
and then as it absorbs a
a hardness ion it releases a hydrogen
ion
so if we look at the other three let’s
talk about
mineral deposit prevention one of the
things that
the moss technology does is it acts as
an absorbent to cations
so your calcium your magnesium
irons and coppers it’s going to absorb
those ions and a lot of times
precipitate them right to the basin of
the cooling tower depend upon how you’re
feeding the moss
and and whenever it absorbs those
cations
it releases the hydrogen ion so if you
add hydrogen
to water what happens what your
alkalinity is going to come down and
your ph is going to come down
well if you are lowering your hardness
levels
you’re lowering your alkalinity levels
and you’re lowering your ph
you’re going to see an lsi reduction or
an rsi reduction so
you’re going to make the water a little
bit more absorbent
to those minerals now one of the things
that people
remember is is you still have limits
on what the the moss can do
and what we’re what we normally feel
like is around 2.2
lsi is about as hard as you want to push
it because you’re not adding anything
else to the water to help disperse
some of these these crystal modifiers or
you’re not adding crystal modifiers or
dispersants
so whatever we’re trying to get the
water into a point to where
it is soluble and you may say well 2.2
that’s much lower than
than what we would ever see before but
because you’re lowering
your lsi you’re increasing the
sizability of water a lot of times you
can
increase the concentration ratio
of the tower so just by pulling those
those minerals out of the water you’re
getting
what you want from the system next i’ll
probably look is
microbiological now moss is not an epa
registered buy side
and so we will always recommend that you
have some type of a registered buy side
along with this program and we have
customers who feed chlorine we have
people who feed
hydrogen peroxides so mark that seems
counterintuitive to me because
wouldn’t that kill the moss we’re
actually using the leaves of the moss
and they are they’re dead they are
picked off the stems they’re they’re
sterilized and then they’re pressed in
the briquettes and briquettes and that’s
how we use
the moss itself so that’s how we measure
how much we’re feeding that’s how we
know
what’s going on so trace what we found
is with chlorine levels up to about four
parts per million we have no effect on
the moss
uh higher chlorine levels will actually
bleach the moss if you ever go into a
moss account and you find the moss is
white
you know that it’s been bleached but you
know some of the unique things about
the moss and although we are we never
recommend feeding it along
i always recommend feeding it with
something else the data
shows that we’re going to feed about
one-third or 30 percent of what we would
normally feed under
a under a normal chemistry program and
so
i had an account that had four cooling
towers i had one
the other three were running beside me
and we were maintaining the
the exact same chlorine residual free
chlorine residual in our tower
and the other three and but we were
feeding one-third the chlorine as they
were on the other three towers
and our atp numbers were all less than
50 on free and total
and our dip slides would be less than a
thousand
normally they would have one maybe two
dots on them um
and so very good biological control with
that program
so when you look at it when you think
about what’s going on
i think you have to refer back to the
smithsonian magazine article back in
may of 2017 and it was entitled
europe’s famed bog bodies are starting
to reveal their secrets
and it talks about where these bodies
these people were thrown in these
bogs these moss bogs and and thousands
of years later they’re retrieving these
bodies and they’re
perfect perfectly intact their skins is
you know
tanning and and all and so when you when
they did the research on it what they
found
was that the moss binds the nitrogen
and what that does is it affects the
growth of the bacteria
and that’s not for me that’s from the
smithsonian magazine article in 2017
and so it’s doing these things and that
has allowed
the bodies not to decompose now what
they also found with
these bodies their bones were still
intact
but they were very flexible you could
move them around and it’s because the
moss had absorbed the calcium out of
them
so it’s it’s there again smithsonian
magazine article is 2000 may of 2017
look it up it’s an
interesting read so
although we don’t make claims about the
biological things
we state that you still need an epa
registered buy-side
application uh program to go along with
that that’s what we see
with the the moss program and as far as
corrosion control
you know one of the things we’re doing
is because we’re not having a lot of
and i like to call them corrosion
accelerators added we’re not over
feeding
acids we’re kind of we’re tweaking the
water to where the phs are not very high
we’ve got enough minerals in there
to where as long as we don’t have unique
situations and
you know such as low low hardness levels
things such as that
we have corrosion rates of of 1 to 1.5
on mild steel and copper are you know
0.05
up to about 0.2 we so where the results
show us
very good control of your corrosion
rates
in the system so as far as your
uh dirt and debris we’ve kind of said
that’s separate
but that’s mineral deposition that’s uh
microbiological and that’s corrosion
control mark is it fair to say when you
were asked to try this on your first
account you were like this is ridiculous
but i’m being told to try it i’m going
to give it a try and see what happens
i looked after a moss program for two
years and still had questions
and probably in order of of my
acceptance
the scale prevention was first the way
that the program handled the
microbiological issues was second
corrosion control was the third that was
the last thing that i
finally accepted in my head as the way
that
it worked so the other thing in 2018
my boss steve tuning did a presentation
at the awt convention
and that article was put into the
analyst shortly after if you want to go
back and read
they’ve got some pictures they’ve got
some data i’ll try to put that on our
show notes page
make it easy for people to find mark let
me ask uh so people can visualize this
how do you put it into a system how do
you feed it we have two ways to feed it
if
we’re feeding it into a cooling tower
with a basin and we have room we love to
use
contact cages which really looks like a
lobster cage
it’s got four little chambers in it you
open up the top you drop the moss bags
in
and close it up and you set it in an
area where there’s good flow
and i will say that that good flow is
critical you can’t put this
in an area a dead leg or over on the
side of a tower you need to put it over
where there’s good flow
the second way that it is fed is through
what we call a contact chamber so if you
can
envision a pool filter the fiberglass
round pool
filter we have those that are available
in in several sizes the water comes in
uh circulates around the top goes down
and then comes out the bottom and
there’s baffles in there to keep them
all separated from the
from the nozzles and so uh we’re going
to put a flow indicator on there so we
can ensure we’ve got good flow through
the
through the contact chamber well mark
the next thing i want to talk about are
non-chemical devices
and uh i’m going to leave this one as a
bit
of a mystery because i’m going to come
back later and i
am going to do a show just on
non-chemical devices
but i’m going to ask the scaling up
nation that with non-chemical devices
with anything that you are
using to treat the system you ask
how does it treat those four areas how
does it look at
corrosion control scale control
microbial control
and control of dirt and debris and i
think we can all agree
typical chemistries don’t do anything
with dirt and debris we need to put a
mechanical filter on there
but if we don’t have that mechanical
filter on there we can’t have the other
three so that’s why they go together
so ask yourself when it comes to
non-chemical devices
how do they stack up to your evaluation
of those legs and
folks i’m going to tell you they they do
work but we’ll talk about how we
actually evaluate those
on another show mark anything you want
to add to that
i think you cover that well in the last
product that i want to talk about
i’m going to leave the name out but it
is a surfactant that can be added to
hot water systems and chilled water
systems that
actually is going to allow the water to
absorb
more heat and you may say well mark how
does how does a product allow
water to absorb more heat simply by
reducing the surface
surface tension of the water and improve
the laminar flow so let’s talk about
those too
if you’ve ever seen a mosquito floating
on top of the water the surface tension
of the water is such that it can
hold the weight of the mosquito and if
you were to put a surfactant in there
that mosquito would sink mark another
thing that you can do
is uh the meniscus if you have a
graduated cylinder and you’re trying to
figure out
how much of a solution that you have
you’ve got those little tight ends that
are
pinching together we call that the
meniscus and of course we read the
bottom of the meniscus on the graduated
cylinder
if you put a little drop of soap on that
which is a surfactant it’ll lay down
perfectly flat
what it’s doing it’s breaking down the
water tension well and the second way
that
we can absorb more heat is by improving
the
laminar flow so as we improve the
laminar flow
what we’re doing is we’re able to get
the heat from the edge of the water
all the way to the center of the water
so therefore we have more room for the
heat to be in the water
and so by reducing the surface tension
and improving the laminar flow we’re
able to
put more heat from the system into the
water so now we’re taking more btus
back to the chiller mark i heard
somebody say once that
uh the the laminar effect laminar flow
is almost like
force fields so the water’s not actually
touching the entire pipe
it’s lifted up a little bit off of that
pipe and of course that’s where the heat
is that we need to transfer
so if we can force that water to lay
down onto the pipe
we’re going to allow more of that heat
to transfer into that water
absolutely and if you ever look under at
that metal
surfaces under a microscope or under you
know some magnified versions you’ll see
that it’s not as smooth as you think it
is
there’s a lot of crevices and the water
never touches there
by reducing the surface tension of the
water that water is actually
laying down and touching all the surface
areas of that pipe and therefore you’re
able to pull that heat out of the air
and into the water and vice versa once
you get over into the chiller
you know what happens there is the water
is going to give up the heat
easier and the chiller doesn’t have to
work as hard to get it out
of the water and so you know there’s
been some studies done on this product
that in hot water systems the boiler
firing rate the number of times the
boiler
fires is actually reduced now this is
the easy one to explain
because if you can say that i can see
that that i’ve got i’m maintaining x
temperature of water and my stack
temperature is 340 degrees
i know that i’m wasting 340 degrees of
heat
however if i put this product in the
water and i’m reducing the surface
tension
and now maintaining the same temperature
my exhaust
gas is only 310 degrees i’m saving all
that taking all that heat and i’m
getting it into the water yeah heat that
you’ve already paid for
i’m going to add absolutely so trace if
we are improving the laminar flow
and reducing the surface tension of the
water we’re getting more of the heat
that’s in the building
into the water so that we can take it
from the air handlers or the process
we can take it out to the chillers where
it can be removed from the system or
we can take the heat on the boiler
system instead of pumping that heat up
the stack we can put it into the water
therefore it can go out to the building
and be used
to heat the building the original intent
of what it was
that fuel was purchased for so when we
look at some of these newer technologies
it’s out there and we have to
investigate them and learn for ourselves
yeah and i think it’s important to
remember our job
is we’re heat transfer efficiency
managers
what are we going to use to make sure
that we’re efficiently
transferring that heat from point a to
point b
and it might be something different than
what we normally
use so you and i have talked today some
different things that we can use to
qualify
is it better is it safer is it more
economic you know what exactly does that
better mean
but just like we were talking about with
solid chemistry i’m not carrying 55
gallon drums on my back to get up a
ladder
it’s a much better choice to use solid
chemistry
well mark it’s always fun when you come
on scaling up
h2o of course uh because of what’s going
on right now of course you’re just
you’re not
in atlanta today so we’re doing this
remotely
a lot of times you just come into the
office and start making yourself at home
and just start recording on my equipment
but this wasn’t one of these days we
actually
planned this and i appreciate you
sharing
with the scaling up nation what you
shared with some of your customers
i especially appreciate you sharing what
you’ve learned
over the past few years with moss well
trace you know
i’ve been in water treatment for 32
years now and i’ve seen a lot of things
and i’m sure in the next
i plan on working another 13 to 15 years
and i’m sure we’re gonna see new modern
technologies come out and and i hope to
learn about them
as well as well as expanding on what
is already out there i mean you know
there’s so many things that that happen
to our systems that i think we we have
to continue to learn
about um about how our technologies work
together
so it’s uh it is fun to to be a part of
of learning and experimenting with and
finding new ways to take care of things
and and that’s what we’re out here to do
is to treat the systems
the best way we can using all of the
resources we have and if
we don’t know that there’s a better way
to do it then we’re going to do it the
way we’ve always done it
and there are better ways to do it yeah
you just got to ask yourself a question
is
is there a better way of what i’m trying
to do right now but mark the most
disturbing thing that you just made me
realize
is we become the old guys i remember
back in the late 90s early 2000s when we
would go to the awt convention
there were people much older than us
that was the majority and
we’ve become the old guys so thanks for
pointing that out
you’re welcome well mark thanks for
joining us scouting up nation i
hope that this interview with mark
has allowed you to think of how could
you do things differently
and maybe things aren’t broken but if we
keep doing things the exact
same way we’re going to keep getting the
same results
and wouldn’t you rather figure out how
you could get better results than having
one of your competition come in
and telling your customer how they could
get them better results
so always push yourself to think outside
the box
and of course always listen to scaling
up h2o see you next week folks
[Music]
scouting up nation on episode 136 you
heard from
four members of the rising tide
mastermind
one of those members was eric russo and
eric
is an extremely busy individual and i
asked him the question how he found the
time
and why he decided to join the rising
tide
mastermind here’s what he said like most
people in the water treatment industry
there’s always a struggle with work and
life and
i had a daughter on the way and i was
probably a little more mindful of
how much i was working and how i can
adjust my schedule
or make it in such a way that was
sustainable for my family
and this conversation is a little more
difficult when you don’t have
people in the water treatment industry
because they don’t understand the
travel aspect the service aspect the
technical
uh knowledge need to be successful it’s
a little
more difficult to balance that so to
have a group of like-minded individuals
to work through
with the goal of self-development it’s
really helpful to kind of hash through
those problems for me
have you ever noticed that if you want
something done
you give it to a busy person why is that
why do busy
people always seem to get something
done and we always wonder why but
there’s a secret to that
most busy people if they’re busy on the
right things
it means that they are successful and
they’ve learned to
say yes to the things that help
with their success however they define
success
think about that when was the last time
you thought to yourself how do i
define success well those are some of
the questions that we
ask in the rising tide mastermind
and eric asked himself if i joined the
rising tide mastermind
will this make me a better husband will
this make me a better father
will this make me a better water treater
and eric has told me that it has done
all of those things
and he is sure glad that he decided
to join folks i cannot say
enough good things about being involved
in a mastermind group
i ask that you go to scalinguph2o.com
forward slash mastermind to see if being
a member of the rising tide mastermind
is right for you
and if you decide that it is not please
find a group that is right for you
when we get together with other people
that are concerned
about everyone’s success everyone
gets better and the tide rises all boats