Water Treatment Blogger [www.h2oside.com]

I was asked a “what’s the catch...” question the other day after sharing the success of our program with a potential client. “…okay let me sum up what you are trying to tell/sell me; - - you say that we can discharge less than 2% of the total water used in our cooling towers, - - get extremely low corrosion rates, - - have zero heat robbing deposits, - - no biological growth, - - no need for any chemical once the protective WCTI chemistry has been achieved. You go on to say that we can actually use recycled waste water without using expensive pretreatment equipment like HERO, demineralizers and do not need to build evaporative ponds and also stop the need for post tower bleed treatment etc… How can that be??... Furthermore, you say we can do all this in most cases for less than a chemical program? OKAY, what’s the catch?” Not being a fisherman myself, and seeing that the client was an avid fly fisherman (personally, I prefer seeing fish fly at Pike Place Market - its a Seattl

Due to the nature of cycled up cooling tower chemistry, "wet/dry - wet/dry" deposits accumulate on surfaces such as drift eliminators / louvers / fill / splash guards. Unfortunately, up until WCTI high TDS water chemistry, this build up was a hard and tenacious CaCO3 type scale from chemically treated systems. Now we see that WCTI with its higher TDS water, appears to build slightly different deposits - is this a problem? No - These deposits are now non-adherent and highly soluble since they no longer contain the hard scale forming ions of calcium and magnesium. Deposits can now be easily washed down with HES conditioned water at garden hose pressures saving man-hours and damage to the fill caused by high pressure cleaning. A side benefit of washing down your tower is that it actually keeps your tower externals looking cleaner, free from dirt, algae and scale deposit buildup.

I am having so much fun watching the major chemical companies, especially those that have placed their entire marketing strategy on chemical treatment, make a complete fool of themselves by showing their ignorance (or should I say their flummoxing and befuddling campaign) about Silica based chemistry ..... Their sales forces are desperate and making remarks like "... where did all that silica go?...." In the meantime their PhD's back at corporate are quietly wishing their salesman would simply clam up and be quiet and not dig deeper "dummy" holes for their respective companies. Their marketing managers are either being complicit in letting their field personnel try to shoot this technology down with real misleading rhetoric or are completely on board and do not understand basic poly-silicate chemistry! I am not going to spend a lot of time trying to educate my competition, other than to say "...guys do your homework - please! - you are embarrassing you

Here in the PNW (and anyone else in this range of make-up water) , regardless how well you passivate and follow cooling tower manufactures recommendations, your galvanized tower basin, tubes and support structure is going to still have W hite R ust appear and sometimes severely. You see, good passivation is important and should be practiced, however, all you have to do is just lose your chemical treatment or lose your solids for just a moment; more especially your pH (alkalinity) - you will fall right back into the conditions outlined by the AWT / CTI organizations that list the causes for WR in no time flat. To avoid extremely high HTI (holding time index), we need to run these chemical programs right on the edge of the WR domain. You see we have a serious corrosion problem up here where you can run the Ryznar Indices and find you have it > 12 - or run the LSI and get -2.6; you are doomed with galvanized. The good news is that more and more contractors and customer

If you have ever run a softener, you know that the one of the main operational functions of that softener is in its regeneration. Without it going through this process correctly, an incomplete regeneration could cause improper ion exchange and allow hardness to show sooner that it's designed removal capacity. Traditionally, WCTI service personnel or customer's operators would have to run a long manual elution study to try and ascertain what might be causing the softeners to run hard. We saw this as an opportunity and designed in a WCTI HES propriety solution. At WCTI, with its propriety high efficiency softeners (HES), we have all but eliminated this concern. We have a real time remote monitoring application and alarming tool for the regeneration process. Our RPA (Regeneration Performance Analysis) has assured the customer that he/she is getting sustainable soft water make-up and it has helped our service professionals ensure continuous soft water supply.

Yes, I am a consultant. By definition, a consultant is an expert in his/her field and shows no bias when providing diverse opinions. So I say - "beware of the consultant" Recently, I witnessed a presentation by a consultant at a water conservation seminar here in Seattle in which he clearly thought he was an expert. However, he showed his complete bias and subsequent ignorance of "THE" subject. I felt he knew traditional water treatment well. However, his presentation of non-traditional approaches to cooling water treatment was so weak, incomplete and biased that it made me ashamed to be classified as a fellow water treatment consultant. For those old enough to remember Dragnet - "...nothing but the facts ma’am..." Well, it would have been a little more believable had we had the facts. For someone to get up in front of some very important customers and prospects and give anecdotal evidence, highlights my case ..."beware of the(this) consultant.&qu