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[Music]
today’s episode is proudly sponsored by the rising tide Mastermind the rising tide Mastermind is one of my favorite
things that I look forward to each and every week because I get to see people
that have my best interest in mind I know this because I have their best
interest in mind and when you get people together in a room like that you can
just imagine how people want to help other people if this sounds like
something you want to learn more about go to scaling up h2o.com
Mastermind welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast my name is Trace Blackmore I’m the host of this awesome podcast happy
2020 24 everybody it’s hard to believe that we are in a brand new year but with
a new year of course we get 12 new months that we can do annual goals and I
always talk about annual goals during the beginning of the year one that’s the best time to do them and I just really
enjoy goal setting and I know so many people out there in the scaling up Nation do the same thing I’ve heard
several people say that they do goal setting as a result of what they’ve heard on this podcast so that is pretty
darn cool if I do say so myself and I mentioned this the last couple episodes
I’ll do it again since it’s the beginning of the year but if you have not read the 12 week year and it’s on
Audible so it’s very easy to listen to so don’t interrupt your podcast listening for this podcast but when
you’re done and caught up with all of these podcasts go ahead and download
Audible and I can get you a free book and a free month by going to scaling up2.com
Audible and perhaps one of those free books can be the 12 week year by Brian
Moran I read that a couple of years ago and I really think it’s the best book
I’ve ever read not just because it tells you how to plan but it tells you how to
execute and by the way if you want a copy of that book we’ve got an affiliate link for you that’s scaling up h2o.com
sl112 the number 12 that is so 12we year and that’ll take you straight to the
Amazon site where you can order the book so uh you might want to consider that I
will tell you my favorite thing to do at the end of the year and the beginning of the year and that’s what these last two shows have been about is kind of
assessing how the last year went and what did I learn for this new year so
it’s my hope that you use this January to set up 2024 to be your best year yet
what are some areas that you want to change in your life and then what are
some goals in each one of those areas that you can change one of my favorite
books is the seven habits of highly effective people and in habit two he
talks about how you create a plan for your life and one of things that he has
you do is write down the top five roles that you play in your life and if I were
to think of myself I would be a husband I would be a father I would be a business owner I would be a mastermind
facilitator I’d be a podcast host so let’s go with those five what are the
people that are involved now in each one of those roles and I would list the
people so my wife Stacy my son Hayden and so on and then I would go on to say
at my 80th birthday party if there was a tribute party and all of these people
that I just identified are going to be the keynote speakers what do I want them to say and that’s called a tribute
statement and I’m going to write that down and every time I try to plan a goal
around one of those relationships it is looking at that tribute statement and what can I do this
week that allows them the best opportunity to say whatever I said in
that tribute statement now I’m not trying to make them say it I want them to say it freely but all these little
bit-sized pieces of things that I’m going to do week after week is what’s going to allow them to want to say that
and I heard that when I was 19 years old and I didn’t have a lot of key relationship like I do now and I’m sure
glad I heard that because that really changes my responsibility that I have
for the key people in my life so I hope sharing that with you helps you learn a
little bit more about yourself and how you are important in other people’s lives and what you can do to make that
even more important and hopefully you can do that with tribute statements now if you haven’t listened to the last two
episodes they were all about one was the end of the year and I told you
everything that I kind of accomplished uh with this podcast and personally and
I hope you did that as well I hope you took the very last episode and that
motivated you to do a Victory lap on all the things that you accomplished last
year and I hope you learned how you accomplish those things and even the things you weren’t able to accomplish I
hope that taught you lesson so you can apply that to this year and then last
week’s episode was a bit of a departure from things that we normally talk about and we talked about relationships and
more importantly how do we ensure that we’re doing our part in conversations to
always Elevate the relationship when I was planning out for that episode I was
hoping that was going to be well received and I have received lots of feedback that people have shared that
that people have relisted to it people have had their spouses listen to it and
all sorts of uh in between so with that I want to thank the scaling up Nation
for taking seriously our responsibility with all of our relationships and it all
starts with kindness and kind words and how do we lift each other up and just
think if we all did that it would be a totally different planet and there’s no
reason that we can’t all live on that planet and it starts with you it starts
with me and with us doing some of the things that we talked about in the last
week’s episode we are now able to be part of that solution so that’s a world
I want to live in I know that that’s a world that’s a lot better than where we are currently at especially if we look
at certain sides of uh our different sides of areas I don’t want to
specifically say politics but it’s hard not to and we see how we’re just arguing
about things and not actually getting things done there’s a reason we do things and I think we need to put that
reason in front of all of our personal gain but I will get off of that soap box
and all that to just say thank you for all the people that listened to last week and shared last week that really
means a lot to me with that let me share some more things with you because one of
the things people tell me all the time when I see you at trade shows and different conventions is they love that
there is a onstop place that they can go to learn everything that’s happening in
the water treatment industry so we normally tell you about a few items and then you can go to our events page on
scaling up h2o.com and you can learn everything that is going on in our
industry at a glance and the team at scaling up H2O has just done a great job
with that they went ahead and put everything that they could find about our industry in the events page and you
can simply click not only to go to that event and register but also click and put those events in your calendar they
made it super easy what a great team we have here at scaling up H2O but here’s
some events that we can talk about right now the 2024 annual conference in CT I
Expo that’s the cooling tower Institute is having their conference in Houston Texas February 4th through 8th we’ve had
several guests that have spoken at the CTI conference so maybe this is something that you want to look more
into and if you’re in the same type of water treatment that I am this is an organization for you and it’s all about
environmentally responsible evaporative heat transfer that includes cooling towers and cooling Tech technology all
over so we’ll have that information on our events page so you can check that out and while you’re there you can look
at the membrane technology conference taking place March 4th through 7th in
West Palm Beach Florida that’s actually where I got married in West Palm Beach Florida not that you needed to know that
but I just wanted to share so this is a conference that explores the latest developments and membrane technology so
if this is something that you want to learn more about and it’s hosted by the American Waterworks Association you can
go to our events page and we’ll have all of that laid out for you right there if you are in Vancouver Washington on March
15th and 16th you can go to the 2024 Pacific Northwest groundwater Exposition
and we’ll have all of that information for you on our events page and the last
event is the 2023 water week taking place in Washington DC April 7th through
13th water week is supported by a broad group of partner organizations that offer a sector of opportunity to advance
in policy priorities for clean and safe drinking water so with that if that is
the type of water treatment that you practice you might want to check that out talking about events yesterday we
just had our first quarter hang and I have to say I love the hangs that we do
because I get to meet so many people with in the scaling up nation and thank
you for all the people that joined us on the Hang we always have a good time and
if you want to join us on the next hang and of course you do the Hang is where
we get to network where we get to meet each other where we get to solve potential and future problems and we
just have fun so the next one’s going to be April 11th at 6:00 p.m. eastern time
it’s exactly for 1 hour I promise it would be worth the hour that you
invested and I promise if you come to one you’re going to come to the next one so I look forward to seeing you on the
hang and to register you can go to scaling up2.com hang once again that’s scaling up2.com
slang well last week we learned all about reverse osmosis with James
McDonald’s new segment drop by drop with James so here is our latest and
[Music] installment welcome to drop by drop with
James the podcast segment where we wonder explore think about imagine and
learn industrial water treatment you guessed it drop by drop
together in today’s episode we’re asking what if H what if a cooling tow blowdown
valve gets stuck open What would happen sure the conductivity would probably start to drop would the cooling tire
basin be completely drained why or why not what is the size relationship
between the makeup water line and blowdown line is there one what could cause a cooling tire blowdown valve to
get stuck open how could you diagnose this problem remotely how could you be
alerted to this problem remotely what would you recommend to recover from this
situation what would be the the impact upon the Water treatment program if the blowdown valve for cooling tower got
stuck open are some valves more susceptible to failure than others in the event of an electrical failure
should a cooling tower valve be chosen that fails open closed or last position these are some things to think
about when asking yourself what if I’m James McDonald and I want to
encourage you to be like water by forming bonds with those around you dissolving new knowledge and making
worthy ripples drop by
drop scaling up Nation I love it when I am introduced to people I have not yet
met and our next guest is an example of that a listener of the scaling up H2O
podcast said this is a guest that you need to interview and we did that and I
know you’re going to love the interview here it is
my lab partner today is Lorraine hucker founder and president of martech systems
welcome Lorraine well thank you it’s great to be here we are very excited to
have you here on the scaling up H2O podcast and I can’t wait to talk about
the paper that you presented at CTI the cooling technology Institute but before
we get there do you mind telling the scaling up Nation a bit about yourself I am a chemical engineer by training I
actually didn’t start in water treatment I started in gas turban engines for
aircraft and uh the defense industry was declining after Reagan left office so I
went looking for something else and I worked at uh water treatment companies
and after their first merger I decided it wasn’t any fun so I became an
independent consultant it’s year 26 and my practice ranges from heavy industry
manufacturing large scale Comfort cooling and heating systems everything about water mostly utility water um and
it’s been a great ride what can I say when I speak with people one of my favorite questions to ask is how they
actually found their way into water treatment how they even know that this was a career choice I’m curious what was
your story I had worked in uh defense in in fact I worked for General Dynamics
doing F-16 engine aircraft integration and I did not want to live in Fort Worth
Texas anymore so I uh came back home to New Jersey and went looking I wanted a
marketing job and I went into technical marketing where we were doing field Trials of new chemicals uh we were
writing marketing collateral and I just kept interviewing I was looked at
compressed gases but I knew I wanted to be in um something where I was in technical marketing they were selling a
product and services was it an ad you saw did somebody let you know there was an opening available yes I went and
interviewed and uh surprise surprise I got the job even though I didn’t have any marketing experience and history was
made that’s right well fast forward to not too terribly long ago you decided to
write a technical paper for the CTI conference and it’s fascinating I’m
going to make sure we put it on our show notes page so people can read it just like I did but to get us started what
problem were you trying to solve and how did you get involved with what you were actually doing let’s start with how I
got involved because I had been working for a large commercial management firm
commercial real estate management firm on their heating and cooling systems and
I got a referral in and they said said this individual is an entrepreneur they’re developing this novel technology
in Washington DC uh suburbs would you go and visit with them and you know my
Consulting practice is really about risk management and Le Legion Alla risk management fits there perfectly I mean
my whole approach is managing risk and I went down and they were showing me this this um device using some kind of
electromagnetic or electrostatic and they were doing scale reduction and over in the corner
was this other device I said what’s that I said that’s that’s our non-thermal plasma um we think it will kill bacteria
I said oh like Le Janella yeah and so we’re talking I said that one’s really much more interesting than your scale
reducing device and so on that kind of hint they switched gears entirely and
and that must have been about six eight years ago and they they did a lab study
they bought a cooling tower and installed it and they ran a a laboratory study on a cooling
tower and you know in five days they proved that the technology had efficacy
against back all kinds of bacteria they didn’t actually have Legionella bacteria and so I went looking for a
client who might be interested in you know doing a full-scale investigation
and one of my past clients I used to refer to him as kind of a mad scientist he was intrigued by all kinds of
Technologies and half my Consulting work with him was trying to guard against him getting
flimflammed like that doesn’t make sense let’s let’s let’s put him on the back burner but um he agreed and you know we
installed the the device and the pandemic hit so we had to wait for
permission to get back in and we did I did get in uh during the pandemic I
think it was June June of 2021 um we were able to get back in and
and commission the equipment and I started the trial it was a 6mon trial
and it actually turned out to be a pretty good time because when you are trying to grow Legionella you don’t want
that many people around exactly the only people on site were a couple the
facilities group and they had um an outsourced facili management group that
was managing just maintaining the building and so uh no one was parking on the parking deck next to the cooling
tower and um you had to bring your lunch because the cafeteria was not open not a
lot of things were open during that time I did not say the actual title of your
paper so is technical paper 2224 managing Legionella using an
Innovative bacterial control system and Rapid genetic Legionella so with that
I’m curious tell us about the device and what was your hypothesis as as you
started this process so the device has actually it uses three different
Technologies uh in order to control bacteria um it has the non-thermal
plasma remember plasma is the fourth state of matter we we might have learned that in science class we have liquid gas
solids and plasma that’s an energized gas and I actually saw one commercial
application um of trying to remove bacteria from used lubrication oils but
otherwise it is unknown in the world of water treatment so the non-thermal plasma has a device and a side stream of
the water from the cooling tower has to pass through the reaction chamber and it’s exposed to these filaments of
Highly energized gas because when the high electrical discharge hits the water
it turn it actually makes little small concentrations of of oxidizers it makes
uh UV light it makes ozone it makes chlorine dioxide because you’re just
using portable water and it actually will destroy any
bacteria that touches but there’s this field around it and we see that bacteria
that aren’t actually killed are wounded they they they can’t reproduce and many
of those are gram negative ative bacteria which often will convert as a
mature to cesil form so the turnover time was probably
about twice a day it would see every molecule of water and that’s important
because if you don’t put enough dosage in then you’re not going to be able to control the second technology was copper
silver ionization and we usually think about that in portable water systems it’s been tried in cooling water
systems but by by itself it isn’t very effective there’s just too much bacteria
and too many suspended solids but when it’s paired with another technology it
has such good efficacy on penetrating biofilms the copper actually will lice
the cell membrane and the silver will enter the cell and poison it and it will
penetrate the uh biofilm the third technology was
oxidizing bioside a mixture of br and chlorine they did an Innovative uh insitu electrolytic production of uh
sodium hypochlorite from Salt to avoid exposure and we happen to use during the
trial uh liquid bromine but ideally you would want the pellets to convert to
solubilized so that you would really minimize any exposure to oxidizing bias so all the uh bacteria that was
liberated from the bofilm whether it was live or dead the oxidizing biocide would
uh kill that bacteria in the bulk water so it was a perfect scenario I like to think of it as a war where you have you
know you have bombs and you have missiles and you have bullets so you know each one has a
different purpose and you know penetrating that bofilm is essential if you have no bofilm you cannot have
Legionella because it needs a higher life form to reproduce it’s a parasite
so in that bofilm exists amibas and protozoas and no biofilm no Legion
reproduction so you’re actually taking the biocides that you mentioned and and charging them to that plasma State no
the nonthermal plasma reaction chamber was first got it right um and we
actually just suspended all of the biocides at the start of the trial it
take took 10 weeks to grow Legionella um because it was a high altit high relatively High altitude in cool Summers
but we did it so I’m curious most of us try to go the other direction in
producing Legionella what were some of the techniques that you were uh imploring to to try to grow
Legionella well obviously first of all suspend all biocides and there is an
algicide there um and so the chemical supplier to his
credit he he must have thought thought I was really trustworthy because said sure we can do that now his upper management
didn’t really think that way but um he was intrigued and so we suspended his
oxidizing basde we suspended the algicide and then we would dose at very
low concentrations of our bromine chlorine mixture just because um we felt
like we really needed to manage bofilm and we did not feed any
algicide and then I was there every other week for two or three days on site testing for Legionella testing the water
quality and we had remote monitoring so that was great and we had remote control
so we could adjust the dosages of anything remotely but I was out of town
on the week it was my week off and I got a frantic
call and the facilities manager said we have a high temperature alarm in the
chiller on the chiller side the clo side they said um what’s going on and I Saidi
know exactly what’s going on I said forget about the trial issue feed the
biocides your normal dosages this was Thursday I’ll be in on Monday and we forget that if Legionella
needs bofilm to reproduce that biofilm is so insulating four or five times as
insulin as calcium carbonate and so we had built up such a large layer a bofilm
that uh we had inhibited heat transfer to the point where the water was temperature was 95 deg in the chilled
water side that’s supposed to be 95 so um I came in on Monday and we had
over 300 cfu per Miller of Legionella because we had the field Legionella
tests within an hour I could get a result and so I said wow here we go took
15 days we we were kind of playing around with the dosages we kept the non-thermal plasma device on but we were
adjusting but it took 15 days to reduce the population to below two cfu per
Miller I thought that was not bad I’m curious what were some of the testing
methods you were imploring with uh both testing the water as well as testing for
Legionella well we did the basic testing for conductivity and pH uh we weren’t
testing for um corrosion control additives um simply because it it wasn’t relevant
to the to the um study and the water treatment supplier U was fully in
control of that dosing and measuring but we used ATP which really did not tell us
all that much um we used the standard dip slides uh we know it does does not
correlate you know General bacteria aerobic bacteria with Legionella and then we used two field qpcr tests
normally and we did send it out to a lab for culture as well so we do show some culture results in our paper but the
qpcr tests the merits of those tests is number one they’re fast um you get results same day so it
allows you to do feedback control you know how you’re doing we can’t use laboratory tests for feedback control
because it’s a two-e process and we had one manual test and one online test and
so the manual test there’s only one it’s out of Canada it’s
gomex and uh it’s a really interesting device I I call it like a busy box but
it has all the reagents in syringes including you know Chaser water to make sure that you’re flushing the sample in
you put your 100 milliliters of water into the device and it filters it all
the suspended solid is out and the bacteria go through the filter and now you need it needs to concentrate the
bacteria make it the the process is amplification so you put the reagents in
and in the reaction chamber to do the sample prep and then you actually push a
button and it takes the bacteria the the the biological material and puts it into
this tiny plastic cuvette and and you know the cuvette you have to pull out the bottom and put it
into the what do they call it it’s it’s not an incubator it’s the replicator so
ity it’s a thermocycler and so you put it into the device and you hook it up to the computer and the computer controls the
thermocycle time and then it transfers the data on the concentration of
Legionella to the computer so it takes one hour and remember you’re not using
Colony forming units per milliliter instead it it’s a different metric
and so interestingly Canada says the qpcr results are exactly equal to the cfu per
milliliter for specification limits I don’t know if that’s true but in the paper some of the graphs will show you
the bacteria accounts from the laboratory and others will show the results of uh
qpcr and then we had an online qpcr uh device which was again remote controlled
and and same concept of course they they claim that their qpcr technology it’s
different for every company you know so theirs was very sensitive we could get
down to one or two relative light units but that one took four hours because you
had to flush your transfer lines and you could remotely ask to program that were
15 tests per cassette and then you would have to manually go and replace the C
you know the consumables but we ran both side by side on the second half of the
study and it was just wonderful to be able to have so much data and to to
verify the population of Legionella instead of um and compare it to to the
lab right remember the laboratory studies there’s a risk that that sample
that you ship even on ice changes and so and of course I already mentioned it’s
not you can’t do feedback control but I had a great time I was learning so much every day did you know which species of
Legionella you were growing in the tower it was uh numafa and most of the time it
was uh s group one the tests that you were using on site would they tell you
what species or the just test for all Legionella the uh field tests test for
all Legionella but in the lab you can differentiate so a lot of people are using the
field-based tests to do exactly what you said where we we’ve got an issue let’s try to figure out where that issue is
coming from because now we can get quicker data and then when things are
back under control they’ll send that sample off to the lab to get that final
verification is that how You’ seen uh those things used you know I have never
seen them used in the field in fact uh I had heard that one water treatment company bought a hundred of the manual
tests but I I talked to some of their field reps and they said we’ve never seen that device so no one knows about
it or no one had known about it and I think it’s worth every penny I’m curious
what did you learn about bofilm during this process well I learned how insulating it was I I really had not
even given it a thought but you know the the bofilm is mostly water and so water
is very insul think about the boundary layer you want High turbulence so that you don’t have insulation from water I
learned about how variable the Janella population would be because it has to be released from the bofilm after it
reproduces and so you know the the measuring day after day one day it might
be 200 and the next day it might be 70 um highly variable and so you know
when we’re used to looking at calcium concentrations you know and that they they rise and fall you know with with a
long period not like Legionella today you have it and tomorrow you have tons of it but the
challenge with bofilm is nobody measures it I mean there are some techniques to measure bofilm
but uh I don’t see them in Comfort cooling and heating systems I mean I
should shouldn’t say heating but some heating systems when they’re idle they have bofilm
and and the simplest method is to take your bypass corrosion coupon rack for your cooling tower and put a stainless
steel mesh coupon in metal mesh and capture bofilm on that coupon and you
can touch it you know the empirical approach um or you can sonicate it and
you know do a bacteria test you can even you know do look at um some of the um uh
biod detectors that will show you will field field test that you’re you can can
see some um nonox or what would I call it cile bacteria and I don’t see that
being used and yet it’s so easy because you’ve got your corrosion coupon rack on any Tower of any significant size if you
can’t see it if you can’t measure it you can’t if you can’t manage it and this is the challenge right nobody manages it
because they don’t measure it and they don’t even I mean the practition the facilities people they really don’t
think about biof film it’s an afterthought until they get that alarm and then they call you so I I’d be
interested to hear people’s feedback on the device known as a bio George it’s a
piso El electric device I don’t have any personal experience with it but from my
time working inside a water treatment company and this of course was over 20 years ago but the the conversation was
that it sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and Lord knows if it’s based on
the location because it’s an online device or you know the maintenance of it or the interpretation of the data but uh
that device is you know continuous and you can get a signal and and kind of track the trend of bofilm and that would
be very helpful because now you can you get realtime feedback to try to manage
it what was the overall conclusion you made from your paper from your
research well the big takeaway was it works I mean on week nine when I
couldn’t even grow Legionella I was beginning to to despair is this a Fool’s errand I can’t
even get to First Bas but you know we put it through its Paces did several
rounds of of kill grow Legionella kill Legionella grow Legionella kill
Legionella and it was clear to me that with that feedback control you could really tune your system and you could
towards the end I mean I know it was colder temperatures and Legionella doesn’t Thrive as the temperature
decreases but we could consistently day after day test after test be below five
and definitely below two for most days I’m curious were there any tests done to
the plasma device without the biocides you were using yes yes we’ve started
with just non-thermal plasma and then we add on copper silver and then we added
on oxidizing bioside what did your data show as you did that well it showed
obviously better efficacy the more modalities you used treatment modalities
but I was surprised at the efficacy of the non-thermal plasma because remember
it’s turnovers twice a day it’s a side stream the filaments have to actually
contact bacteria to kill it and they wound the ones around in the electric
field but I was really surprised because what we saw with the paddle testers is
one side was total aerobic bacteria but the other one was gram negative and that
really helped us to see that gram negative bacteria was decreasing so that was surprise to me
was there any way to measure how far the plasma went in the system what did it
did it totally recirculate did it lose its no no no when it left the reaction the
chamber it was no longer plasma very short-lived any data that that helped
with lowf flow dead leg areas where we have those problem areas where Legionella likes to hide out and we
can’t get to it yeah the only possibility is that the copper silver
ions will dis uh disperse Into the Dead leg I mean dead legs are
a known Hazard for Legion growth I have one client who he was on a rampage he
was systematically eliminating any dead leg in his system a noble goal but
simple to do but takes a lot of focus and effort so I’m not I’m not confident
that that is the only way to manage it what do you want the water treaters listening to this podcast to do with the
data that you presented number one is to gain an awareness about alternative treatments
and the fact that the current treatment may not be the most effective option I
mean if you think about what is the Precision for feeding nonoxidizing
biocides I mean I’ve always wondered like how do you know the right dose you you don’t you don’t measure cile
bacteria so it’s twice a week in the winter in those shoulder seasons and
three times a week in the peak season I where that number come up I mean I don’t
even see any empirical basis for it I’m not a water treater I never was I was
always you know behind the scenes but um this is a challenge if you don’t control
cicile bacteria you’re not controlling the risk where do you want to see water
treatment going say in the next 10 years I would love to see automation I mean
the the systems we were use the systems that were at that site completely manual
adjustment no feedback control not on anything we don’t have feedback control
on on um non-oxidation biocides but certainly everything else can be
automated uh online analyzers testing for sessile bacteria
it’s simple at least have data and um you know it’s not just about water
treatment it’s about what your customer or client does I mean are they doing routine maintenance if something breaks
right are they cleaning the tower are they washing the louvers are they
cleaning out the Basin what’s their idling strategy are they dosing with biasi before they lay it up when they
inspect a chiller if this isolation valve doesn’t hold they might drain a
significant amount of water and then they refill it with water but no chemicals so it’s a full court press to
manage these systems both for Legionella risk management but also reliability
it’s not glamorous hindsight’s always an amazing thing from all of the things you learn
through this process if you had the opportunity to go back and redo this study what would you do different oh
that is so good I know exactly what I would do I would go get one of those
model heat exchangers they sell them commercially and many of the water treatment companies have them uh in their in their
own Arsenal to use as a tool but you know you can match the tube wall
thickness and you know tube design and you it take a side stream of the cooling
water and you at Time Zero that tube is perfectly clean and you’re putting heat
on it and now you can watch the biofilm form and you can watch the heat transfer
efficiency drop I mean Le can be a very unpopular conversation especially at
cocktail parties but when you start talking about
if you control bofilm you control Legionella but is a bigger bonus and
it’s money real money which is electricity for heat transfer efficiency
now you’ve got something you basically get two birds with one stone so I I I I
think the message has to be about bofilm causes a lot of problems health problems
but it also is increasing your operating costs were you able to collect any data
about how your procedure affected corrosion within the system I mean they
have corrosion coupons it’s rather a gross measure my sense though is that we
were dosing oxidizing bias side at much lower doses than the uh incumbent water
treater um and both of them were shot feed but
we were systematically feeding shot feeding and then uh feeding again during
the same day perhaps it was a much more frequent dose at lower concentration so
we were we were mindful about the risks of shot feeding oxidizing biocides but
again the corrosion coupons they met spec I mean it just it didn’t tell me much now if we had a COR
rator on on online I think we could have gotten some more information but you
know big picture there are the corrosion rates from that study were probably less than
normal operation what’s the bottom line that you want to get across in this interview I think there are a lot of
tools and understanding um to manage both these issues you know Legionella
and heat transfer I think the mental models are so important to think about
you know the technical literature talks about Legionella in particular but doesn’t really get into the details
about which things are most important to manage the risk sometimes it’s not water
treatment at all it’s the what the what the owner does to um you know maintain
the cleanliness of the system and and idling it properly you know it’s where the rubber meets the road well r with
your permission I’d like to put your paper up on our sh show notes page so people can read that as they listen to
the podcast that would be great so thank you for that uh I do have a couple of lightning round questions for you if
you’re ready for those I’m ready all right so if you could go back to your very first day as a chemical engineer
what advice would you give yourself I think about my own career explore other opportunities particularly if you’re
discomforted like I was don’t think that’s a negative it’s an opportunity to
Think Through uh take some risks and believe in your abilities don’t let your
employer map out your career chart your course how else would I built a really
nice Consulting business wrote a book and I’ve traveled the world some places
I won’t go back but it’s not a vacation tell us about your book oh it is about influent water
clarifiers filters Dem metalizers softeners and uh reverse
osmosis or actually membrane filtration and it’s really designed for people who
are not experts in water it’s probably the best audience is an operator or an
early career engineer who doesn’t know anything about water it has it’s a very
practical book tips and tricks and um it was really a lot of fun to write well
speaking of books what are the last few books that you rad this is an interesting list an
Eclectic list uh I I read woke Incorporated by one of the presidential
candidates VC rasani very interesting insight into Corporate America I’m a big fan of Tom
Clancy I read the sum of all fears now that unfortunately is a little bit of a
mirror of what’s happening in the world today and the last one might surprise you I I’m reading the book companions in
Christ which is a discipleship chaining and we’re meeting we meet as a group um
to work work through that book very good book so my last question for you if you
could talk with anybody throughout history who would it be with and why I grew up Catholic but I would love to
talk to Martin Luther because he was a Catholic priest that challenged the moral authority of the Roman Catholic
church and his conviction that the Bible is a central religious Authority and
that we’re saved by faith not works made it possible for people to have this personal relationship with God and I
just I find that such an invigorating way path forward for religion really
change the world well I really appreciate you coming on the scaling up H2O podcast thank you for not only the
paper but all the information that you’ve given to the Water Treatment Community thank you I love
it scale up Nation as I mentioned at the the top of the interview I met Lorraine
by having somebody reach out to the scaling up team and saying this is
somebody that you need to meet not only did I get to interview Lorraine I also
got to meet her in person when we were at the International Water conference
this past November I had the distinct privilege of being the keynote speaker
at that event and that was just so cool I’m looking forward to doing some more
keynote speaking and uh I got to attend several of the technical papers there at
the International Water conference uh Lorraine actually gave a presentation
and Lorraine is methodical she makes sure that all her tees are crossed and
eyes are dotted and I really enjoy reading her papers and listening to her
present because she is just very factual and she anticipates what people are
going to ask so uh she’s a very good presenter so not only did I get to experience that several presentations
Lorraine and I sat next to each other and as the presenter was talking about
stuff we were kind of able to give each other some extra information back and forth to enjoy that presentation even
more so thank you for introducing me to Lorraine and Lorraine thank you for coming on the scaling up H2O podcast
early in the show we heard James doing his drop by drop and I mentioned last week uh he covered reverse osmosis so I
do want to go ahead and mention one of my reverse osmosis Heroes is Jane Cera
and that is episode 339 so if you want to learn some more about reverse osmosis
339 is definitely the episode to do that and Jane has just come out with a third
version of her reverse osmosis book it is the end all Beall of everything you
would ever need to know about reverse osmosis and not only is it printed there
Jane puts so many resources so even as the information changes you know where
to go to get that information it is by far one of my favorite reference books and if it’s not on your reference shelf
you probably want to make it part of your references so we’ve got an affiliate link for you that is scaling
up h2o.com and I think every company needs to have
this on their bookshelf to make sure that when you have Ro questions you’ve got a great resource to go to of course
that’s after you listen to episode 339 but I just have to say it is such an
honor and a pleasure to be able to host a podcast where I get to meet so many
great people like Lorraine like Jane and do things like be the keynote presenter
at the International Water conference that is just such an amazing honor and I
get to meet so many people so I want to thank the scaling up Nation for listening to this podcast each and every
week and by making sure other people know about this podcast we get to meet more people we get to do more things and
of course we’re going to have more topics for you each and every week if you know a topic that you want to talk
talk about on this podcast maybe it’s you maybe it’s a guest maybe it’s just an idea you have whatever it is please
share that with us we are always looking for ideas for the show and you can go to scaling up h2o.com go over to our show
ideas page and then that will make sure that when we’re talking about what are we going to talk about next we have your
idea in front of us the scaling up nation has kept us going 7 years strong
we’re going to hit 400 episodes episodes by the end of this year the only way
that we are doing that is we are in this together so thank you for helping us
make sure that this is the best water treatment podcast out there scaleup Nation I can’t wait to bring another new
episode to you next week until then take care [Music]
folks SC Nation it’s my hope that whatever you do in the industrial Water Treatment Community that you you do it
with excellence and if you’re in the same type of water treatment that I’m in I do that by maintaining my certified
water technologist designation I know so many of you out there are studying for that prestigious certification and I’m
here to help I’ve answered each one of the mock exam questions letting you know
the logic behind how questions are asked and also doing all the math to show you
how to set things up so you can easily find the right answer and make sure you
don’t select one of those sneaky wrong answers go to scaling up h2o.com
cwt prep again that’s scaling up2.com cwt prep to sign up
today