By David H. Martin
The Water Quality Association presented a wide-range of opportunities in the commercial and industrial areas that were very well received by attendees. The expansion of its industrial education program and greater emphasis on the commercial sector were welcomed by many. Several international companies that had not previously attended were happy to see the expanded program that highlighted changes in the industry and paved the way for their entry into the US marketplace. The usual big market players were also well-represented and appreciated WQA’s alignment with the broader water marketplace.
WC&P International interviewed Cedella Beazley in the Dow Chemical booth early the first morning of the Indianapolis show and gained insight into how companies viewed the overall state of the industry and the event. “I’ve been at Dow Water 19 years, starting out in engineering sales. I was recruited out of college and later held sales manager and marketing positions with the company in Chicago, IL and Edina, MN,” said Beazley. “My most recent title was Global Product Manager, Filmtec Membranes. A year ago I was named General Manager of Clean Filtration Technologies, a new Dow acquisition based in California focusing on new filtation recycling technology. Since then, we have added some people and resources from Dow Water and Process Solutions to accelerate this small company’s progress and product introductions.”
In her previous position with Dow, Beazley headed global sales and marketing for Filmtec, the world’s largest manufacturer of RO and UF membranes. Dow introduced five new RO membranes for residential and commercial applications at the Indianapolis show. Some of the new designs are optimized to handle extemely high TDS in Asian markets, said Beazley. “These new high-peformance membranes are ideally suited for the world’s fastest-growing drinking water filtration markets, which include India and China.”
Clean Filtration Technologies (CFT) introduced its revolutionary fine particle filter for industrial applications last November at The International Water Conference in San Antonio, TX. “What differentiates TEQUATIC PLUS from other technologies, including settling systems, media filtraton, cartridge filters and bag filters,” explained Beazley,” is that it is designed to treat water that has very high TSS. It combines self-cleaning cross-flow filtration with centrifugal separation and a small settling section into a single unit. All of these enable the filter to handle suspended solids north of 100 ppm up to 10,000 ppm, with very high uptimes and recovery rates, north of 95 percent. It’s a product of choice for really challenging waters.”
The TEQUATIC PLUS filter participates in the fine-particle filtration market (providing filtration capabilities of > 10 microns), cost-effectively removing very high and highly variable TSS. It is a breakthrough, patented technology that combines the power of continuously cleaning, cross-flow filtration with centrifugal separation and solids collection into one device. It is designed to handle a wide range of difficult-to-treat feedwaters having very high and highly variable total suspended solids (up to 10,000 mg/L) much more cost-effectively and consistently than traditional technologies.
Dow began selectively applying the technology in the industrial marketplace in 2010, according to Beazley. “One of our first field applications was filtering water for disposal in the oil and gas industry. Whereas bag filters would plug up quickly and need to be replaced constantly, TEQUATIC PLUS demonstrated that it simplifies the produced water for disposal process, making water management programs more cost-effective. It provided a consistent supply of quality filtrate without fouling, chemicals, filter changes or backwash cycles. Other Clean Filtration Technologies applications include pretreatment for industrial RO and UF where raw water consists of unpredictable suspended solids, for example, filtering a lake or river water that has big swings in solids. We are doing a pilot program now on the Brazos River in Freeport, TX, using TEQUATIC PLUS in front of other technologies downstream, to reduce these swings and help other equipment function more reliably, reducing downtime and improving cost efficiency.”
Beazley said, “Orders are also being filled in a variety of applications where the filter is used as a primary filter; as a prefilter and pretreatment for applications such as RO and UF; or even as a post-filter in applications such as moving bed bioreactor (MBBR) systems. MBBR is the most recent application to benefit from the new filter technology, which is being integrated into systems for five hospitals in Iraq to help meet stringent requirements for treating wastewater prior to discharge into rivers. The customer found the filter to offer a variety of advantages over multimedia, including low maintenance, high uptime and the ability to simplify their system in ways that reduced their overall footprint.”
Oil and gas fracking water filtration, a major target
Beazley believes her Dow unit’s best immediate opportunities for fine-particle filtration lie in the industrial sector, especially in the rapidly expanding oil and gas fracking industry. Fracking (short for fracturing) uses vast amounts of water in the fossil-fuel energy industry practice. “TEQUATIC PLUS will treat and recycle both the fracking water and the produced water that is delivered to the well surface with the oil and gas. Two pilot programs with water management service companies employed by oil companies are currently underway in Texas,” said Beazley.
Benefits of TEQUATIC PLUS fine filtration include 99.5- percent water recovery, insoluable solids removal of 49 to 74 percent, minimal maintenance, higher productivity, improved safety and sustainability. CFT plans call for rolling out on-site mobile fine-filtratration and water-recycling modules for fracking operations across the US and Canada. An alternative approach is to treat and recycle frack water at a centrally located facility. The company is completing construction of a 12,500-sq.-ft. manufacturing facility to produce more units to meet anticipated demand in Menlo Park, CA. An integrated team of 30 CFT and Dow Process Water people are involved. The municipal market for front-end filtration is not a priority for Clean Filtration Technologies for two reasons, said Beazley. “The municipal people are slow to adopt new technologies and they are quite satisfied with their long-standing systems and processes. In the long run, however, we see back-end recycling or reuse opportunities for TECQUATIC PLUS in the municipal sector.”
C/I product launches at WQA Aquatech
The WQA Industrial Section Meeting previewed prerecorded service webinars, beginning with an RO installation demo. Twenty-two webinars are planned, all to be recorded and archived on the WQA website: www.wqa.org/education. WQA educational print manuals are to be transcribed for on-line distribution. Certification credits will be awarded for advanced courses delivered on-line, beginning with the first on deionization. Guest speaker, Ralph Ericson from the Madison, WI Metropolitan Sewage District spoke on the need to reduce or reuse chlorides in waste streams.
Pentair featured its revolutionary Hybrid DI system with Crosscharge Technology, a capacitive deionization system used for commercial water treatment. Able to deliver the combined benefits of RO water and softened water without the use of salt, the system also features an intuitive, touchscreen controller that monitors its complex functions in an easy-tounderstand interface. And, because of the electrochemical process, there is only a once-per-year maintenance requirement, which makes the customer’s management of the product far more efficient. Products can only be identified as having this technology inside when the Pentair Crosscharge logo appears on it. “This system is changing the face of light commercial water treatment by delivering treated water through a power cable rather than a bag of salt or a drum of chemicals, which reduces its environmental footprint,” said Pentair Vice President, Sam Karge.
Pentair Everpure displayed its new Everpure 2CLM and 2CLM-S, and the Eltek Water Block for the office coffee and water market segment. Both the 2CLM and 2CLM-S filter cartridges were created to reduce chloromines, which have a negative impact on the taste of water and one’s coffee experience. The 2CLM-S comes with the added benefit of scale reduction, which protects brewing equipment from potentially damaging limescale buildup. These quick-change filters fit existing Everpure filter heads. The compact, yet high-performance designs meet the specific needs of the office coffee and water market segment, offering Pentair customers a cost-efficient solution for chloramine reduction. The Elte Water Block is a new overflow safety device for office coffee and water applications. The operator sets the device to control the maximum consumption of water between five and 50 liters (1.3 and 13.2 gallons)—whatever is needed to support a piece of water-using equipment. It measures the number of liters of water that have passed through it. If the quantity exceeds the set value, the Water Block stops the flow to prevent flooding and keeps this safety condition until an operator resets the device. The Water Block is cost-effective insurance, providing valuable office flood protection for about the cost of a coffee airpot.
Conclusion
There was much to see and hear at WQA Aquatech, so much that taking in everything made for a mad scramble to get from one seminar to another and still find time to visit vendors and talk to visitors. The shifting paradigm toward commercial and industrial applications was welcomed enthusiastically and will be a continuing part of future WQA Aquatech events. If you missed us at Indianapolis, we will hope to see you in Orlando in March 2014. Even more progress on the C/I front will be made in the meantime, to the benefit of everyone who is reaching out into vertical markets.
About the author
David H. Martin is President of Lenzi Martin Marketing, Oak Park, IL, a firm specializing in water improvement and environmental marketing that integrates old and new media. He can be reached at (708) 848-8404 or by email at [email protected].