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