Water Treatment Blogger [www.h2oside.com]

What's Next for the Pacific Northwest? El Niño Conditions El Niño conditions are present in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and are expected to persist through the winter of 2015-16. The magnitude of sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies has stayed consistent over the last few weeks, and the weekly SST departures from normal are near 3.0 degrees Celsius in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. The " El Niño Advisory " that was released on March 5 is still in effect, and the El Niño is now exceeding the strength of the strongest El Niño on record, 1997-98, in some measurements. Model  consensus is extremely high that the El Niño will persist through the winter, with chances above 95%, and the current forecast indicates that it will remain a "strong" El Niño event. Chances that the El Niño will persist through the spring have increased to about 85%. The 3-month seasonal forecasts from the  Climate Prediction Center  are representing the tendency for

Patent Pending :-) BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THAT DRIFT? Cooling towers have for the most part been out-of-sight, out-of-mind until now! They have served their purpose well and will be around for many more years to come.   However, we are seeing many being replaced with designs that address more water conservation operations.  A number of tower manufactures are making adjustments/design changes to meet the unique nature or zero bleed and WCTI chemistry. Look around- and you will see both direct and indirect evaporative cooling systems popping up everywhere - especially in the high tech data center markets as engineers are looking to minimize the use of water as the primary cooling media. One company (WCTI) has taken on this shortage full force and has offered hundreds of customers now with its low cost Zero Bleed Silica Based programs with total cooling tower plant discharge of the LESS than 2% - without compromising system performance. WHY?  - Fresh water is g

Remember when... Well, I could make this a "period" piece or go on forever - like remember when it was cool to have a pager to keep in touch etc... Whoops, this is a water treatment blog, so I will stick with telling you that now, I am having fun reminiscing with my zero bleed customers .... “hey, remember when we used that solenoid bleed valve for solids control... and now it’s a paper weight on your desk!” What we do know now however, is that simple math can be scary. If, for example, you were to take into account that you found that all of your cumulative leaks in your tower totaled one gallon per minute; that would be equivalent to over 1/2 million gallons a year. Now let’s say you have the following water cost totals - supply water and sewer respectively, @ $8.67 & $5.309 per thousand gallons. Now, you are looking at $7,347 in out-of-pocket expenses. WOW!... that's worth a great year-end employees’ BBQ with lots of distilled C2H5OH over some crushed cub

All through our water treatment career - lots of us have used this phrase when speaking of those NCD and any non-chemical program while working for the chemical company.   At that time period, it was confirmation for our salesman in the field to feel comfortable about speaking ill-will referencing non-chemical applications based on our completely non-biased marketers advice ;-)  This was because marketing was repeatedly telling us [ some had to toe-the-line ] that chemicals were the only treatment that worked.  This was indicative of my past and present experience and at that moment I knew I had to take this "Semi-Natural" picture.  I believe that some dubious marketing today is truly operating on a classic case of " Smoke & Mirrors " relative to water treatment.  The good news for WCTI distributors is that we can’t use smoke and mirrors explaining Mother Nature's role.