The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
turn your windshield time into learning time when you’re not listening to the scaling up H2O podcast listen to the
next book that is going to unlock something so you can do better in your daytoday by signing up for audible go to
scaling up h2o.com audible to get a free book and a free month and learn why it’s one of my
favorite [Music] tools welcome to the scaling up H2O
podcast the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems my name is Trace Blackmore and
Nation what an amazing day it is episode
350 that is an amazing number I can’t believe we have
350 episodes out there of the scaling up H2O podcast yes if you’re really
counting there’s probably a lot more out there when I was originally numbering
the podcast I was trying to do creative numbering so I did episode 14.1
14.2 anyway we did all of that and I got out of track and then we just came to
our senses by us coming to our senses that was me and I just decided that
sequential is probably the best way to number podcast so we just keep up with
the number that we are at so we’re going to officially say there’s 350 podcast episodes out there of
scaling up H2O and Nation we are getting stronger and stronger each and every day
in this scaling up nation and the only way that is happening is because you are telling other water treaters that there
is a podcast out there for them and they are making sure that they subscribe to
our podcast so each and every Friday they get a brand new episode just like you do and imagine not knowing that
there was an industrial water treatment podcast out there and then somebody sharing the gift that there are more
than 350 episodes now I can’t say that because we said officially it’s 350 even
though I numbered a little bit oddly in the beginning so officially there’s 350
episodes you and I know that there more than 350 episodes but just imagine
knowing for the first time that you have this wealth of information out there and
we’ve had so many amazing guests on this show there is just so much knowledge
that you get to assimilate as you are driving from account to account
servicing all of your customers and now you get to Bone up on all this great
water treatment knowledge so thank you for all the listeners out there that share that with new listeners that’s how
we find new members of the scaling up Nation it is all you so thank you for
doing that and by the way if you have not gone on your favorite podcast player
and left us a review I’m going to politely ask that you do that I know
that doesn’t sound like a big thing but that tremendously helps us get our
podcast in front of more industrial water treaters that they might not have
known that there was an industrial water treatment podcast out there so every time we get some sort of review it
actually pushes our ranking when people search for water treatment podcasts up
higher and makes it easier for people to find so I would very much appreciate it
the great team here at scaling up H2O would appreciate it if you could leave
a review on your favorite podcast player well Nation on episode 350 I want to
talk about something I mentioned a little bit last week we’re going to go into a little bit more detail this week
I’ve been involved with the association of water technology since
2004 and one of the things that I get to do each and every year is I get to be
one of the presenters at their Technical Training and their Technical Training has so many
things to offer and I wanted to go over a few things because one I’m going to be
there and I know if you’re going to be there I get to meet you so I want to make sure that you know everything
that’s available to you so hopefully we can get you in a seat so you and I can
talk and meet each other and if we’ve already met I want to hear what’s been going on since the last time we saw each
other so the first thing is say sales training now I actually do the sales
training and what I’ve done I’ve put together a lot of items many items that you’ve heard me talk about here on this
very podcast but I’ve done it in a way that allows you to figure out how to cut
through all the red tape when you are trying to sell your water treatment wees
doing it with all the things that we mentioned here on the podcast so that is
the very first day and simultaneously on that first day
there’s also the membrane technology the RO and ultra filtration training going
on the air wall curtain right beside me so these include things like uh reverse
osmosis ultra filtration EDI and all things related membrane technology so
maybe that is something that you want to do or maybe you are new in this industry
or maybe you want to make sure that you can explain this industry to somebody
that’s new or even some of your customers well if that’s you you want to
attend the fundamentals and applications training that is also something that I
have a part in you’ll also see people like Justin Ranger who’s been on this
podcast and Mark Lewis who has been on this podcast we get to together and we
try to lay down a foundation of knowledge so you can build everything
you are ever going to learn on all things industrial water treatment so
that’s the fundamentals and applications training and that goes on right after so the day after sales training and the
ultra filtration training so the fundamentals and application training goes
simultaneously with the the water treatment training now this is a very
intensive industrial water treatment course and this course covers all things
industrial Water Treatment from Regulatory and safety issues water
chemistry testing calculations I’m very fond of calculations I get to teach you
calculations if you take that course boiler water treatment cooling water chemistries we even talk about
Legionella regulation and so much more now here’s the cool
thing about this class really it’s with every one of the courses but you get to
hear not only the material in the course but all the firsthand knowledge that the people
presenting have and where do you get that where do you get all of that knowledge in one place well this is a
great place to go also there is a Wastewater training class and an ass e
12,080 course now they don’t do those at each one of the conferences so you need to check and see which training you’re
going to so that way if you want to go to Wastewater you go to the one where they’re having Wastewater if you want to go to the assc 12080 training you go to
that one now uh assc 12,080 I think is a great designation
for people to have in this industry because so many of our customers want to
know more about what they need to do with Legionella due diligence and when
somebody has that certification I really think it bolsters not only their knowledge but their confidence and how
they can properly talk to their customers so if you are looking at
getting certified this is an option that you can do of course there’s also other
options there are other courses that you can take from the comfort of your own home home but if you want an in-person
course this is one of the few courses out there that actually are inperson so
go ahead and check that out and I did mention Wastewater folks for those of you that
are involved in Wastewater are thinking about getting involved with Wastewater
this Wastewater seminar is second to none experts in the field are telling
you Baseline knowledge all the way up to Advanced knowledge and all of their
experience is going along with it there’s even handson testing so you can
figure out what is the best way to methodically go through treating a new
waste water so I highly recommend that that’s a great class that’s done all of
these courses are Great Courses now when are they going to be held the first one is going to be March 6th through 9th in
Frisco Texas and then the next one is April 17th through 20th in Cleveland
Ohio folks like I said I will be there I hope to see you there and all you have
to do is go to scaling up h2o.com and go over to our events page and we’ll have
every bit of information that you are going to need to figure out which
training you’re going to go to and what classes you are going to sign up for
speaking of the association of water Technologies I have met so many amazing
people at the awt and the member that I’m getting ready to introduce as our guest has been
on the show several times but here he is once more I know you’re going to love it
here’s our interview my lab partner is returning
guest Mike SSH vice president of water additives at MFG chemical and founder of
radical polymers welcome Mike ah thank you thank you for having me back well
and I mentioned that returning guest you just said welcome back I’m not welcoming you back for one welcome back it’s
actually your third time on the podcast so thank you for all that you do to help
the scaling up Nation absolutely maybe uh the third time will be the charm and
um you know we’ll do good job this time well I got to tell you the other two times were episodes 14 and 176 and
episode 14 I have gotten so much feedback where people now can understand polymers
because you did such a good job of saying hey we over complicate this stuff this is a real simple way to look at it
so that’s episode 14 if you haven’t heard that and then in 176 we talked
about tagged polymers which of course is the new water treatment craze yeah yeah
absolutely and uh actually some further advancements there I think uh recently
that uh some people introduced at awt with maybe more simplified monitoring uh
so yeah it’s uh nice to see that you know progress well there have been some changes with radical polymers can you
tell the nation a bit about that yeah since uh 176 which I had to go back and
look that was I think January of 21 we sold our company to a company called MFG
chemical and um you know that that was interesting you know I I would say it
was interesting for us and it interesting for our customers uh we didn’t take that lightly a lot of it was
precipitated by the supply chain crisis that was going on during that time and
Co where we were you know probably having to manage a lot with bringing our
products in from Europe and so MFG was local Manufacturing company with plants
here in the US and it was just a great uh fit in fact the CEO of MFG is a
longtime water treatment guy Paul ton so it’s just a great fit for our customers
for our employees and and for you know me Chelsea and others at at radical
polymers I know that has to be exciting Mike we’ve had you on a couple of times but if somebody is just tuning in to you
for the first time can you tell the nation a bit about yourself yeah I started in 1986 in the water industry
working as a chemist or a co-op student actually at the time doing a scale
testing lab work and I I’ve pretty well done that through most of my career
probably the first half of my career always as a bench chemist uh working
developing scale Inhibitors corrosion Inhibitors and to some degree
biocides and then the second half more on the business side so yeah I’ve been
working in developing uh Technologies for water additives since 1986 and
through a number of companies and you know that’s my passion well Mike at the most recent awt convention you presented
a paper I was extremely impressed with that so I wanted to have you on the scaling up Podcast so we could talk
about the paper that you presented yeah that’s uh great we we
presented a paper that was uh has a long title but essentially the the beginning
of the title is purposely built and the idea was around kind kind of looking at
history of some of the sulfated polymers in particular and trying to build on the
learnings of since actually the 1970s of those types of products to make a
tailored material for today’s conditions Mike let’s start from ground one how
would you define a polymer yeah so a little bit of a soap box for me because polymer comes from
the Greek term poly meaning mini and myrr meaning units so that’s not the
Soap Box moment but basically there’s two types of polymers either homopolymers which you’re having the
same repeating units or co-polymers which you have two or more different types of repeating units so the Soap Box
moment a little bit for me is is that anything more than one monomer is a
co-polymer whether it has three four five or however mean numbers you know you wanted to put in there everything’s
a co-polymer so we in our industry and kind of our common uh language will use
you know tur polymers Tetra polymer quad polymer what have you but those are more
marketing terms from a strict technical polymer science view anything with two
or more monomers is a co-polymer so we’re just stringing these things together using a synthesis process where
we take again these individual units called monomers and react those using
what’s called free radical polymerization for the most part in our industry that’s the method and we string
the the monomers together to form homopolymers copolymers Etc as we talked
about in episode 14 polymers can be very tricky when we think of all the
different ways that are used to describe them what do you want every water treater to know about
polymers I think the thing that you have to know about po polymers is very different than other molecules basically
every other molecule that we as water treaters use are discrete so for
instance if you buy pbtc phosphinate phosphono butane tricarboxylic acid that
is a molecule that is very strictly defined has so many carbon atoms so many
phosphorus oxygen hydrogen so forth polymers like we use for scale control
and waste treatment are randomly produced uh so they’re not the exact
same uh and and that’s very critical because what you can see is is pretty
vast differences in functionality and quality from you know one polymer to the
next uh you can really change very nuanced things and see pretty profound
effects on the efficacy of the polymer so I think you know without getting kind
of in the weed so much on that what I would say is a main thing I would want people to know about polymers is that
somebody’s buying say a 3,000 molecular weight polyacrylate that’s not all you need to
know because it’s not exactly 3,000 molecular weight it’s made by a random
process it can be made using a lot of different systems uh that can impart
very very different properties to the polymer so you need to engage with your supplier and really you know kind of ask
those next levels of questions because polymer a is not the same as polymer B
so you mentioned molecular weight another way of measuring is Dalton can you explain those two and when we’re
Reading literature about polymers what do we need to know about that so we can have the next conversation with our
supplier yeah so yeah Dalton is just the measuring unit in theory it’s the
formula weight so if somebody says that I have a product that’s 3,000 molecular
weight the technical term for the measurement would be Dalton but that means it weighs 3,000 if you add up all
the mass of all the atoms in the polymer then it would technically be 3,000 however that’s not actually the
case because when you make polymers you’re making a distribution of molecular weights and so if you’re
making them well normally it’s a gan distribution or a bell-shaped curve and
so you’ll have in that 3,000 quote unquote so podcast air quote I’d say and
that 3,000 molecular weight that’s actually the average molecular weight or the m subw is denotation for that so
you’ll have thing you’ll have strands of polymer that are a thousand you’ll have strands that are 5,000 but on average
they work out to be 3,000 when you spoke you made the comment it all started with chrome what
did you mean by that yeah so I like the history of kind of how technology has
developed and not developed in the water industry because in a way you know we’ve been
stuck in time in in some ways for the last several decades with technology
around water treatment I think that’s a good thing and a bad thing but I like to kind of look at the history and if if we
go back to the you know pre-1970s the role of polymers in water
treatment was pretty simplistic they were mainly used as dispersants and and maybe some specialized scale control and
the reason for that was is at least in cooling water technology you could use chromate and so chromate is a phenomenal
corrosion inhibitor for mild steel and because it so effective you can operate
cooling systems down at pH 6 and A2 or seven and there’s really no potential
for scale like calcium carbonate or calcium phosphate or what have you so
you know you use chromate make your U you know water orange and great
corrosion control and and really the role of polymers there is to disperse solids you know wind blown debris or
what have you the turbidity that collects in the circulating water so you know the the role of polymers were
pretty simplistic at that point but then comes you know the Banning of uh hexavalent chromium in cooling water
systems or in water treatment in general and at that point then the industry looks for alternate
corrosion Inhibitors and we landed on phosphates polyphosphates for the most
part you know phosphorus compounds but the types of polymers that have been
used as dispersants for solids were not effective as stabilizers for calcium
phosphate you know and stabilizing those corrosion inhibitors for mild steel so a
whole new class of polymers had to be developed at that time so that’s why I say from a polymer point
of view it’s almost like a demarcation in time where uh sulphonated polymers
and other polymer types came on the market along with the elimination of chromy I remember I was in elementary
school and I would follow my father around as he would service accounts and
they were using Chrome back then in the very early 80s maybe even pre 70s I
probably would have been 5 years old in 1980s so probably right around that time time but I remember him saying the water
wasn’t orange enough that was the primary test yeah and I mean it was phenomenal if anybody wants to kind of
get a little 30,000 foot view of it uh you can go back and watch the movie Aaron Brockovich because that kind of
talks a little bit about that that lawsuit out in California discusses you know the elimination of chromate and and
the hazards of that and started the transition of the industry my wife
wanted to go see that when it first came out I reluctantly went to the theater with her because I didn’t want to go see
a chick flick but it was all about cooling towers it was the most fantastic movie it’s probably the only Water Treatment movie out there there we go
we’ll have to we’ll have to see how many people uh watch that movie when uh this episode comes out Mike I feel I need to
share this with you I had a chemistry professor that he started out a class one day and he said hexavalent Chrome
will kill you trivalent Chrome they put in vitamins chemistry is a wicked mistress
I like that you know one thing I would say just so we don’t lose this kind of
part a little bit is it’s really important to know that when phosphorus
chemistry kind came on board as the type of my steel corrosion inhibitor the the
issue is is it’s not as effective as chromate and and so other adjustments
had had to be made which again seem kind of second nature to us today but at the
time were pretty profound because that phosphorous chemistry is not as
effective as chromate what water treaters had to do is is start to operate systems in more scaling
environments so your pH shift is probably the major one you started to eliminate the use of acids in many cases
we started to operate cooling towers where our circulating water phes were more typically between 8 and N instead
of seven and 8 to to mitigate corrosion to get in a Range where the phosphorus
chemistry could be effective so that’s a major thing but we increased the potential for scaling you know when that
occurred and then what had to happen is these new classes of polymers had to be developed to stabilize the phosphorus or
the phosphate compounds like calcium phosphate in the water a lot of companies changed to using phosphates
and zinc what was the name brand product dtic 2 I think it was called yeah so
there were two approaches Calon had a lot of patents around the use of uh
sulfonated chemistry acrylic acid amps copolymers which is really great for
stabilizing calcium phosphate and then you mentioned the dtic 2 which was bets technology they took a different
approach they used carboxilate nonionic copolymers specifically a nonionic
called hydroxypropyl Acro and that is also a a very good calcium
phosphate stabilizer the problem was with the diotic 2 and the hydroxypropyl
acrylate is it’s not hydrolytically stable so that’s why you had to have a two drum treatment so you know that kind
of went by the wayside uh you know over a relatively short period of time and
where the industry settled was on sulfonated copolymers for phosphate stabilization and zinc uh stabilization
as well fortuitously the sulphonates will help stabilize both phosphate and
zinc so Mike you’ve taken us into the early 1980s what happened next yeah so
it’s pretty interesting to me because again to recap a little bit of what
happened is so we have this one strand of of Technology that’s carboxilate
sulfinate we have another strand of Technology that’s carboxilate n ionic
and those two technology strands if you will kind of came together by Roman hos actually back in
the day and and they looked at okay how we we see these functionalities working how can we bring bring these together
and so you started to see the co-polymers containing three monomers or
you know Soap Box again tur polymer where we we combine carboxilate
sulphinate and nonionic and and what was found around that time
is is that the nonionic could really provide some enhancements it could help with reducing dosage levels could expand
the functionality range Beyond just phosphate iron and zinc stabilization
you know could add some other benefits to that the one point I would also make
is that everything since then has been a variation on that theme so what we use
today it doesn’t matter what brand of product you use or you know what copolymer tur polymer Tetra polymer or
whatever that you use it’s all a variation on the theme of carboxilate
sulfinate and then potentially the addition of the non-ionic monomer as the
enhancer as they were developing these as they were trying to figure out are
they working better than what we previously had what kind of tests were they doing how were they verifying that
yeah so for me I’ve been doing this type of testing since 1986 and there’s some
types of scales that like calcium carbonate um you know calcium carbonate
you you can develop reasonably decent you know laboratory tests to evaluate
additives for calcium carbonate but you know pilot testing or actual field
testing is you know almost mandatory at at some point uh because there’s usually
a gap but for calcium phosphate and zinc stabilization iron
stabilization the benchtop testing is actually a very good proxy for what
you’d observe in the field so there’s there’s benchtop testing that’s used or bottle testing you know where you would
make up synthetic water that would replicate you know what was going to be employed in the field uh and then
certainly people you know would use pilot testing as well and then go into field testing but one thing that I would
say that be important for your uh you know audience to to think about is that
with calcium phosphate stabilization iron stabilization zinc stabilization
that kind of class we’re not dealing with rocket science we’re not dealing with rocket science with any polymers
but in particular this there is a very direct correlation between the amount of
sulphinate the amount of nonionic you know molecular weight some of these key things and efficacy of the product so
you can see that pretty plainly in black and white within the benchtop testing
and pilot testing and certainly out in the field with phosphate iron and zinc
stabilization let’s unpack that a little bit more if somebody went to their safety data sheet and they saw what
polymers were in their products what do the different polymers do that people are going to see today specifically so
they can they can understand their safety data sheets better but then also how is different mixes between the two
how is that changing the formulations yeah so you know a typical
cooling water formulation is going to have say AOL in it for you know yellow metal corrosion
it’s it’s going to have a phosphinate in it unless it’s a zero P type application and the phosphinate typically is in
there for strictly for calcium carbonate threshold inhibition and you might use
you know say HP phosphonate if you’re in a low LSI or low to moderate LSI
condition and then pbtc phosphinate if you’re in a higher LSI condition and
then comes the selection around corrosion Inhibitors so if if we choose phosphate
polyphosphate Blends in there then we’ve got to choose a polymer that’s that’s U
that’s functional for stabilization of the phosphate and in the circulating water so that today is typically a
sulfonated copolymer that may may not have a nonionic in it as well if we have
severe issues with calcium carbonate we may may also incorporate a malic based
polymer in there to complement the pbtc for calcium carbonate control under
stress conditions and that’ll be kind of the you know basic framework of today’s
cooling water formulation most people as they’re reading their formulations or their
safety data sheets they’re going to come across a term AA amps what is that and what
should every water treater know yeah so um AA is acrylic acid and amps is
actually a trademarked term by Luol company because they were the developer
of of that molecule and that is a sulfonated monomer that’s called two acry amido two methylpropane sulfonic
acid just rolls off the tongue yes well amps is the you know short acronym for
that and by far there are other sulfonated monomers used out there but
by far I’d say at least 80% of the co-polymers that you’re going to see out
there there sulfinate are going to contain amps as the as the monomer and
then you know you may see again a third or fourth monomer added in there in in
the industry the dominant products that are used that you know your audience would be purchasing and familiar with
could be acrylic acid amps co-polymers or the just a straight AA amps and
there’s a couple of variations of those typically the industry will look at it as a
7525 aamps and I’ll explain that or a 6040 aamps and those are the weight
ratios of the acrylic acid to amps on a weight basis and that’s important to
know too a little bit in the weeds but a little important to know is that
typically what you want to do because amps is a much bigger molecule than acrylic acid weight ratios are a little
deceptive you typically want to look at them on a molar ratio so I want to I
don’t really care about weight I want to know kind of how many repeating units there are of acrylic acid and how many
repeating units there are of amps it works out to be that the 7525 version is a 9010 ratio on a molar
basis so that means if you have a polymer that is 10 repeating units long
nine of those are acrylic acid one of those is the sulfinate the amps and in
the case of the 6040 weight ratio that works out to be about 82% acrylic acid
on a molar bases and 18% of the sulfinate the amp so in same
scenario we’ve got 88.2 repeating units and 1.8 repeating units but 80% more
sulphinate in the 6040 or you know uh 828 acrylic acid amps that makes a big
difference you know you can see dosage Demand Being really dropped that’s
proportional to the increase in in sulphonate in those polymers and then
from there the people will incorporate relatively modest amounts of nonionic monomers in there that will show some
enhancements good examples of that is if you think about it the straight co-polymer of acrylic acid and amps it’s
fully anionic or negatively charged so it’s mainly going to associate with
charged particles and not so much Organics not so much some types of iron
oxides that’ll have some hydrophobic character so you know one great example
of the benefit of adding the nonionic is it’ll help the molecules start to
associate with a broader range of particulates where it can function as a
disperson Mike where do you see polymer technology going into the future you know I I mentioned a little earlier that
for the most part with chemistry in the water industry we’ve been pretty
stagnant you know people are pretty well doing variation of what they were doing
in the 1980s uh across the board okay you you’ve got tag polymers but that in
itself is not particularly new it’s kind of new to the broad industry but you
know it’s been around for a little while you know most of the innovation has been around monitoring and control and uh
equipment you know in our industry so you know I I I think as very broad
trends of what we’ll see with technology on the polymer side is we uh deal with
some of the macro trends like you know reuse water where we’re having more phosphate say in in our you know having
use poor quality water using gray water what have you and we you know end up with cooling towers that have you know
30 40 50 PPM of phosphate and circulating water well we’ve got to up our game on the polymer technology to be
able to manage that as one example or as we go to The Other Extreme where we have
zero P well that’s pretty profound as well it’s almost like the transition
from chromate to phosphate where we had to make the water less corrosive and more scaling we’re going to have to do
that to another order of magnitude because the things that are in line to replace phosphorus chemistry as a
corrosion inhibitor are even poorer you know uh in terms of their efficacy so
that means we’ll tend to operate things more you know up in 88 to 92 pH
circulating water PH ranges which means that the scale Inhibitors are going to have to be even more effective for
calcium carbonate control for instance so I you know I think some of those micr
Trends I think you know as monitoring and control become more and more and more valuable tools in the water
treatment industry then you know things like tag polymers are going to you know continue to uh grow within our industry
so that’ll probably be another area where you know polymer technology will improve I see most of it as stepwise as
opposed to Quantum leaps you know let’s somebody really comes through with some breakthrough type
technology Mike you’ve been in this industry for a while what’s one of the
major changes you’ve seen in water treatment throughout your career yeah I
I think I’ve been very very fortunate to be able to be on uh kind of at the
beginning of the awt Revolution if you will you know I I think you know when I
started in ‘ 86 you know just to be very very Ed the company I was working for
wasn’t really going to turn me loose with the tier one companies you know to
as a young you know 20 year old or whatever they weren’t going to connect me with somebody in neille or treos or
whatever and so I really began working with you know a lot of the independent water treatment companies and became
very connected within that group and that’s where my heart and passion is and uh you know I think it’s been really
fascinating to see how independent water treatment companies have really exploded over the
last several decades and grown into you know leaders in in the industry that
that’s that’s been pretty interesting and and I I’m happy that I’ve been able to observe that and participate in that
some degree Mike you and I have both been involved in volunteer leadership
we’ve chaired committees we’ve been on boards together I’m curious why do you
do that and why should others consider doing that I’ve always have said and when I
talk to people that get to serve say on the board of awt or whatever I I was fortunate to be able to do that at one
point in my career as a supplier and it was probably one of the best experiences of My Life as a career person so I think
anytime whether it’s you know within industry or in your personal life anytime you help somebody else you or
give somebody a gift in some way or what have you you’re always the one that gets the bigger reward than the person that
you’re you know giving to or the organization that you’re giving to or what have you and I think that’s very much true here I mean it’s helped me
grow it’s helped me learn it helped me you know see a lot of diverse types of
opinions on technology on the industry in this case or what have you I’ve just
uh it’s been extremely rewarding Mike this is your third time in the hot seat so are you ready for
round three of the lightning round probably not well let’s see how you do
Mike what are two books that everyone should read this year and why do you
enjoy them okay so I haven’t been able to read as much but I was kind of
thinking that you might ask me something about this so I’m going to give you a hybrid answer so I am struggling only
because of me not because of the book but I love the book it’s and it’s a movie now it’s the killers of the flower
Moon that’s a very interesting uh book and it’s a true story it was highly
documented about the Osage Indians out in the dtas back in the 1920s and the
government basically took their land okay that you know no political thing there but it backfired on them because
they put them on this really Rocky hilly crappy land what turned out it was full of oil and so you had in the 1920s all
of these Native Americans that are multi-millionaires in the 1920s I mean
there’s stories in this book about you know somebody has a flat tire of their brand new car they just go get a new car
you know it’s that type of Lifestyle so that’s a very fascinating book what I
have been doing a lot lately is uh watching um documentaries I love to watch documentaries so I’ve got a couple
that have been really fascinating to me and I won’t spoil these but one I would recommend would be Donut King and it’s
about this guy Who immigrates as a refugee into the US from Cambodia and back in the 1970s and he he
starts to work for wisel’s dut shop in California and then starts to do it
himself so he opens up his own business and then he starts to bring all of his family and friends and so forth and they
start opening literally hundreds of dnut shops in California to the point where
like Dunkin Donuts can’t break into this Market and then there’s kind of a twist
ending so I would highly recommend that one and I on the other end of the spectrum there’s one called
honeyland and it’s about a lady in Macedonia very very very poor lady that
lives out in the village with her mom just the two of them out in the middle of nowhere and she is using traditional
methods collecting honey from bees and then all of a sudden another family
comes in and they decide to start doing that as well well they destroy her bees
and that has kind of a twist ending as well but uh those are two great documentaries that uh I’ve really
enjoyed watching lately Mike what are you looking forward to most in the New
Year oh that’s a great question I have a lot of travel coming up it’s a personal
kind of travel uh coming up so I’m looking forward to that a lot we have started going to Honduras doing some
work down there with local and uh so I’ve got two trips next year lined up to go to Honduras really excited about that
my middle daughter has a uh trip that she has to make with her uh graduation
from college it’s an international trip I’m going to be able to go on that with her and then we got a vacation plan so
uh yeah I think that’s probably what I’m looking forward most to in the coming year Mike I want to let you know
Honduras is some of the most amazing Scuba diving you could do so see if you
can work that in I’ve heard that there’s an island there that I’ve flown over that I can see that looks pretty
spectacular Mike a lot of people listen to this podcast when they’re thinking about getting into this industry what do
you want them to know as they’re considering is this the right career for them you know it’s funny I was visiting
some customers this past week and we were talking about that a little bit one thing to know is that once you’re in
you’re probably never going to get out I don’t know if that’s unique to this industry because I never got out so this
is kind of the only industry I’ve known but people that get in tend to stay in I think that speaks very very well for the
industry so that that would probably be one you know major thing if if you’re considering getting in this is a great
Community there’s a lot of people you can learn from lean on collaborate with
so I think that you know this is an industry that’s a community and in some cases it can be a family family and um
you know it’s it’s a great rewarding you know experience to be in this industry I
could not agree more and you and I have definitely shared that Community with all the things we’ve done together over
the past years so I want to thank you for that friendship and I also want to thank you for coming back for your third
time on the podcast scaling up H2O well thank you very much I I appreciate the
[Music] invitation SC Nation Mike is just one of
those people that is able to take complex information and deliver it in a
way that everybody can follow along and so many people comment whenever he comes
on this podcast that they love his southern accent so there you go you got
a Southern accent very easy to follow along Mike thank you for once again
coming on the scaling up H2O podcast and I’m not sure if I kept track of all the
time times that Mike has come on this podcast now I’ve done some Drive buys at
various conventions where Mike has graciously talked about what was going
on at awt conventions and some other conventions that I’ve been at so I don’t
have all of those that he’s been on but I know he’s been on episode 14 which is a very early episode in fact he was one
of the people that uh said he wanted to help me with anything I could do with this podcast C and I said well you could
be a guest and he said sign me up so he was episode 14 we had him on again in episode 176 and I know there have been
several episodes since then so um Mike thanks for all you do for the podcast
and and Mike thank you for whenever I have a question about polymers or
different chemistries you are one of my go-to guys that I talk with to make sure
that I am doing things that I’m supposed to be doing Nation I hope you have people like that on your speed dial is
that still a thing am I aging Myself by calling it speed dial anyway you’ve got a cell phone and I know you have people
programmed into it so I hope people like Mike is one of those people and another
person that I have on my speed dial yes I said it I’m calling it speed dial is
James McDonald and of course James McDonald he gives us a reason to try to
get smarter each and every week so here’s another opportunity with a brand new drop by drop with
[Music] James welcome to drop by drop with James
the podcast segment where we wonder explore think about imagine and learn
IND duster water treatment you guessed it drop by drop
together in today’s episode we’re thinking about the the cooling tower conductivity set point picture it if you
[Music] will the cooling tower is running like
normal as water flows recirculates and evaporates we see the connectivity
continues to increase then it happens the connectivity reaches a set
point on the controller then what seriously what literally happens next I
can’t think of anything does the controller immediately send a signal to the blowdown valve to open up how does
the controller’s deadband or differential or whatever your controller manufacturer chooses to call it come
into play the controller uses a deadband so the blowdown valve does not try to
chatter open and closed as the connectivity fluctuates from being exactly on the set point to not being
exactly on the set point such chatter trying to open and close the valve could very quickly wear a valve out as well
well as the relays in the controller itself whoa plus the valves may not even
be given enough time to reach their minimum energized times does the deadband sandwi your connectivity set
point or is it a one-way setup where it starts at the set point for example if
your connectivity set point is 1,000 micr semans and your dead band is 100 micr semens would your blowdown valve
first open at 1,000 or 1,50 micro cement this will depend upon the set up in the
controller and the options the manufacturer has made available to you another point to consider is whether any
bioside lockout timers are currently active which would prevent the cooling tower from blowing down during a biosite
application once your blowdown valve is actually open though does the cooling tire conductivity start to drop
immediately have you ever thought about this before H you need something to settle you down the answer is actually
it probably does not start dropping immediately the connectivity may even continue to rise until enough water has
been removed from the system to drop the level low enough to trigger the makeup water valve to open as fresh makeup
water starts flowing it will dilute the cooling tire water and this is when the conductivity will begin to drop
wa next how long will the connectivity drop until the controller closes the blowdown valve this is where the dead
band or differential will come into play in our previous example of conductivity set point of a th000 micr cement a dead
band of 100 micr cement when the connectivity drops to 900 micr cement the controller closes the blowdown valve
and the overall connectivity pattern repeats itself as you can see the control of connectivity in a cooling
tower is not as simple as opening and closing a valve there are design considerations to limit the wear and
tear on the blowdown valve plus the reality of having to trigger makeup water flow as the water level lowers for
the conductivity to actually start to drop
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 James as always thanks for doing that and Nation if you want to get
caught up on any drop by drops you can go to scaling up h2o.com and we’re going
to have all of those listed for you so don’t worry if you missed a couple you can catch up and there’s so many people
that try to keep up with James each and every week and every year where we do this imagine all the new information
that you were getting all the reinforcement that you were getting with the information you think you already
know but the way James is asking you to think about it maybe you’re going to get to know it a little bit better I hope to
see you at the Technical Training that I talked about at the top of the show Nation if you have a show idea don’t
keep that to yourself go to scaling up h2o.com and go over to our show ideas
page let us know who you want us to talk to let us know what idea you have let us know if you have a question or a comment
whatever it is we want to know it my name is Trace Blackmore and I love
bringing this show to you we’ll of course have a new one for you next Friday in the meantime tell somebody
about the scaling up H2O podcast and I will see you next week week take care
[Music]
everybody