Industrial Water Softener Maintenance

Res-Kem Corp. and our sister company General Water Services offer preventative maintenance contracts for customers here in the Mid-Atlantic region. I thought it might be helpful to go over our Preventative Maintenance procedures for a commercial or industrial water softener for those of you who maintain your own water softening equipment.

For an industrial water softener we suggest our customers have bi-annual visits by our technicians. It's a very simple inspection that can prevent unscheduled downtime and the associated problems. How often our customer tests the water hardness is largely determined by how critical the application is and the availability of staff. We strongly suggest testing the water hardness on a daily basis if possible.

Res-Kem service technicians do a mechanical inspection that includes the following:
Inlet and Outlet Water Hardness - When we specify a commercial or industrial water softener we are given a water analysis, the average, high and low flow rates, hours of operation, and desired end-point. It's important to note changes against the design specification. If all things are equal, seeing hard water at the outlet points to a mechanical problem with the water softener (or no salt in the brine tank). If something else has changed - flow rate is lower or higher than specified or the inlet water hardness has increased - our technician will review the data with our engineering department and discuss the problem in greater depth with the customer.

Inlet and Outlet Pressures - Pressure testing is done when the water softener is running at the design specification. If there is a high differential the water softener might be running at too high a rate. If the water softener is running at a typical flow rate, (10 – 15 gpm/ft2) and there is a high differential pressure, the resin bed could be plugging up and preventing the water from flowing through the softener correctly. The differential pressure across a softener resin bed should generally run less than 15 psig. Of course there are many factors, which can result in higher differential pressures, i.e. depth of the resin bed, design of the internal distribution, age of resin, etc.

Inlet Chlorine (in absence of carbon filter or bi-sulfite feed) - Chlorine will break down cation ion exchange resin. Exposure to significant amounts of free chlorine, "hypochlorite" ions, or other strong oxidizing agents over long periods of time will eventually break down the crosslinking. Over time the cation resin turns to mush and will plug up the bed or eventually be flushed out so there remains much less resin than required.

Check salt level in brine tank, add if necessary

Make Note of Leaks - Our technicians are trained to look carefully for that small drip. We'll fix it if possible while we're there, otherwise we will make an appointment to come back to service the problem. You should have gaskets in on hand for both the manway and handhole openings.

Make Adjustments to the Control Valve - You should have received an operating manual with the water softener which includes information about the system settings.

If outlet water is out of hardness specification adjustments may be necessary.

Verify water softener timer is set to correct time and day.

Recalculate how often the water softener should be regenerating based on hardness and gallons and adjust control as necessary.

Optional Annual Maintenance

Valve Maintenance - There are many different types of controls and valves used on a commercial industrial water softener. In general you will need the following parts on hand to perform this service:

Aquamatic Valve Nest Systems - Diaphragm & Seal Kits, Internal Parts Kits, Seat Tools and Shaft Tools.

Fleck Top Mounted Control Systems - Upper and Lower Seal & Spacer Kits, Top Piston Kit, Lower Piston Kit.

Autotrol Top Mounted Control Systems - Internal parts kits. Specific kits depend on valve type.

Ion Exchange Resin Test - Although softener resin will last significantly longer than deionizer resin, in the presence of chlorine or other oxidants it will break down. If your water is highly chlorinated or has other contaminants such as iron, you should test the resin within 18 to 24 months of start up and every year thereafter. Otherwise, test the resin after the third year and then every year thereafter. By doing so you will know when to budget softener resin replacement as it is often a major expense.

Resin Traps-Insurance for Industrial Water Systems

Recently, Res-Kem published a white paper entitled "Inexpensive Insurance for Water Treatment Systems-Resin Traps" by Ron Madden. In this white paper, three examples demonstrate how resin traps act as inexpensive insurance for costly problems that can develop when ion exchange resin reaches downstream process areas, process equipment, or the product. Depending upon the plant or process, the payback can be nearly instantaneous!


Summary:
A simple resin trap, long favored by experienced operators of water treatment
equipment, is an inexpensive form of insurance being used more frequently in water treatment systems. Should an internal lateral break or otherwise fail, resin traps eliminate the possibility of ion exchange resin or other filtration media leaving water treatment equipment where it belongs, and prevent it from traveling downstream where it does not belong. Install a resin trap. Like insurance, do not wait until catastrophe strikes to see the value.

Examples:
The three examples are from:

An automotive plant where the resin trap was installed AFTER a plant shutdown

A poultry plant where the resin trap was installed AFTER a plant shutdown and quarantine of millions of pounds of processed chicken

A refinery installed BEFORE a problem occur ed

Patented UV Technology Reduces Size and Energy Costs of UV Disinfection

Res-Kem is now handling the newly patented UV light by UV Sciences. This revolutionary new UV unit has highly efficient UV reaction chambers for water disinfection. The flow chamber maximizes the delivery of the ultraviolet energy into the water stream effectively increasing efficiency 3 to 7 times when compared to an equivalent flow rate system.

Conventional UV chambers absorb the UV light energy and create heat. Instead of the UV energy, photons, being absorbed by the housing chamber generating heat, the photons are kept in the water medium. This keeps the photon active until it finally absorbed by a microbe or chemical molecule such as TOC, or chloramine. To maintain an effective UV disinfection dose, it is necessary to have a uniform flow rate. UV Sciences engineers used fluid dynamics modeling tools to optimize the flow tube, and designed a UV chamber that has a uniform flow rate.

The result is a compact and energy efficient UV disinfection unit. The 500 gpm unit chamber is 4 inches in diameter and only 40 inches long. These UV units offer the smallest size and lowest cost of ownership in the industry.

Arsenic & Lead Removal From Water Using Enviroscrub Media

While at the recent WQA Aquatech trade show, I met with a gentleman from a company called Enviroscrub Technologies Corporation. They have a new lead and arsenic removal media that might prove to be an interesting addition to the current mix of products available to water treatment companies. The testing is looking good although they are still looking for pilot sites. It is NSF 53 and 61 certified for drinking water standards. From what I understand it will be competitively priced.

Enviroscrub has a process patent on the media, which is a mixture of iron, manganese and diatoms. The media has gone through rigorous testing under varying water conditions at multiple sites. It has high arsenic loading characteristics and fast kinetics. This media can remove both Arsenic V and Arsenic III. This product weighs between 22-26 lbs per cubic foot with a particle size of 0.6 mm - 1.4 mm.

If you are interested in participating in a pilot study feel free to contact us. As more information on this product becomes available I will post to this blog.

Industrial Water Treatment at WQA-Aquatech Conference and Exhibition

March 17th through 21st the annual WQA Aquatech Trade show was held in Chicago. The WQA is now including industrial and commercial vendors and products in the mix. This year there were a couple of new products introduced that were of interest to us here at Res-Kem. While at the show I had the opportunity to attend some of the educational sessions as well as give one. Many of the topics were "industrial" in nature.

An area I am particularly interested in is employee training and I was part of a panel that discussed this topic. Regardless of the type of company you run - residential dealership, industrial service company or manufacturer, an important part of the job is employee training. Large companies have entire departments dedicated to training. Smaller companies can and need to compete to keep good employees and maintain good morale.

Here are a couple ideas you might be able to use.

Tap your vendors
Invite your vendors in for a lunch and learn. The vendor brings the pizza and the topic you supply the audience.

Contact your local community college
Your community college will know if there are grants available for worker education. At Res-Kem, I was able to offer an electrical course in my office that ran 20 weeks for engineers and service technicians. I completed a one page application, the community college did the rest.

Use the WQA Certified Water Specialist program
Smaller independent companies don't necessarily have the framework to educate the work force. Using the WQA Certified Water Specialist (CWS) format gives you just that. Rather just giving my people the book and telling them to study, I hold a weekly class to go over each topic. I cover the book work so they can pass the test, but I tailor it to our business. We are not a residential dealership so many of the examples do not apply. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop me from taking real world problems and addressing them within the context of the Certified Water Specialist program. At the end of the course I have the test administered and proctored at the local community college.

FYI, the WQA-Aquatech 2010 Conference and Exhibition will be held March 9 - 12, 2010 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida

General Water Services Website Finished

The General Water Services website, www.generalwaterservices.com, is completely new and vastly improved. Information on deionized water system deliveries can be found there.

About General Water Services:
Located in suburban Philadelphia, General Water Services offers portable service DI water systems. General Water Services regenerates and delivers large and small deionized (DI) water systems. The flow rate through an individual bank of tanks ranges from 1 to 150 gpm and depending upon your flow requirement, single or multiple banks are used.

General Water supplies portable service DI water systems for high purity and ultra high purity water applications for virtually any process industry including, but not limited to, chemical, power, beverage, food, electronics, pharmaceutical, medical, medical device, hospitals, laboratory, glass manufacturing, and assembly industries where deionized water is critical to production available for long-term contractual service and also for short term or emergency needs.

Standard Deionized Water Service Area

For Further Information:
Visit the General Water Services website
General Water Services brochure.
General Water Services product bulletin.

Condensate Polishers Shipped for Local University

Last month, Res-Kem shipped a quadruple condensate polisher system to a local university. The condensate polishers are used to treat the water in the condensate loop, reducing water treatment chemical usage and reducing heat waste from excessive blowdown.
The system is comprised of four individual ASME-code stainless steel tanks with stainless steel internals, face piping, and Aquamatic valves. All external piping was a combination of welded and flanged stainless steel. Each system has an Aquamatic 962 controller to operate the valves during the backwash and regeneration cycle. The regeneration and backwash cycles are initiated by a differential pressure switch.

The local Res-Kem representative sold and installed the system at the university. The new system replaced a twin condensate polisher that had reached the end of its life.

The design flow rate is: 450 gpm
The peak flow rate is: 600 gpm
As stated above, the regeneration is initiated by a DP Switch.


The qualification process by the university was very rigorous. First university personnel visited out manufacturing facility in Aston, PA to see a similar system being built in our assembly facility. Afterwards, university personnel visited a local customer with a water softener and water dealkalizer. After we were qualified, our engineers worked with the site personnel to modify our standard design to fit the site's requirements.

Buckyballs Could Reduce Biofouling of Membranes and Pipes

An interesting article in the March 6, 2009 issue of The R&D Daily e-newsletter entitled "Buckyballs could keep waterworks from clogging" introduced how using buckyballs, engineers in Duke University's Environmental and Civil Engineering department hindered the ability of bacteria and other microorganisms to accumulate on the membranes used to filter water in treatment plants. This leads these researchers to propose coating pipes and membranes with these nanoparticles may reduce biofouling. The results of these experiments were published March 5, 2009 in the Journal of Membrane Sciences.