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.

Water Analysis Article

I came across an excellent article in an old issue of Water Conditioning & Purification magazine entitled "Making Sense of an Incomplete Water Analysis" by Frank DeSilva of ResinTech Inc. This article defines what the minimum required water analyses are for:

Cationic Applications (hardness removal, metals removal, radium removal)

Anionic Applications (sulfate removal, nitrate removal, chromate removal, uranium removal, organics removal, perchlorate removal, fluoride removal, dealkalizers, boron removal)

Deionizer Applications

Prior to quoting a residential, industrial, commercial, or municipal water treatment system, the first question we ask at Res-Kem is an inlet water analysis. Often we need to work with incomplete or missing information. The main thrust of the article explains how an educated water treatment person can deduce a missing cation/anion value when there are other known water test values available. As a result, you will be able to properly size the water treatment system.

One great piece of information was the following chart. This chart makes it extremely easy to calculate the cation-anion balance and how to size the system. The conversion factor takes the concentration of an ion in mg/liter to ppm as CaCO3

Fleck and Autotrol Valve Seminar

On a recent, very snowy day, twenty-two plumbers, well drillers, and dealer personnel braved dangerous driving conditions to attend the Res-Kem hosted, hands-on seminar on Pentair and Autotrol multi-port valves for residential water treatment systems. These 22 people are owners or employees of 11 Homestead System dealers, www.homesteadsystem.com, from Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The seminar was taught by Dave Smith, Dealer Development Manager, and Kathee Srygley, Regional Account Manager of Pentair.



The valves the seminar primarily focused on were two multi-port valves with advanced electronic controls. The Pentair Fleck 7000 XTR valve and the Pentair Autotrol 268 760 valve were studied, broken down and reassembled. Attendees learned how to diagnose and fix common problems. These valves are used respectively in the 3000 and 2000 series Homestead System softeners, neutralizers, carbon filters, city systems, odor removal and iron removal systems. To add realism to the class, Res-Kem enhanced the normal Pentair program by giving a live demonstration of an installed water softener in the Res-Kem wet test area.
Typically, Pentair graciously sponsors similar seminars at a local hotel. We felt having the live demonstration and access to Res-Kem’s complete warehouse of valves and parts would enhance the learning experience. Michael Urbans, Res-Kem Residential Technical Manager instructed this part of the seminar.

In addition to learning about softeners and filters, attendees were introduced to the Pentair Fleck 5600 SXT, Homespring, FreshPoint and RO membrane systems. They were given a sneak peak at the new iron removal valves Pentair will introduce based upon the Pentair Fleck 7000 AIO valve and SXT controller.

WQA members were given .65 Continuing Education Units (CEU) for attending the seminar. If you would like to be on the invitees list for other courses, please contact us.

General Water Services Website Being Revamped

The General Water Services website, http://www.generalwater.net/, is currently under construction. The new and vastly improved website will be back up not later than March 1, 2009. If you want to be notified when the site is refreshed, send us an email to us or subscribe to this blog using any of the links on the left side of this page.

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.


Depending upon your flow requirement, single or multiple banks are used. We supply 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.

DI water systems are available for long-term contractual service and also for short term or emergency needs.

Our standard service area runs north to south from New York City to Washington DC and east to west from coastal New Jersey to Harrisburg, PA. On a case-by-case basis, and depending upon the economics, we provide deionized water systems significantly outside our standard service area.

Unmatched Quality Control Procedures
Meeting high purity water quality immediately after regeneration is the easy part. Having your DI water tanks reach projected capacity at the specified water quality is the bigger challenge. Each batch of mixed bed resin regenerated by General Water Services is laboratory tested for both quality and capacity to guarantee predictable capacity at the specified water quality. Retained samples of each lot of regenerated resin are kept for a period of two years. General Water Services takes the time and bears the expense to test for capacity prior to shipment. It is this consistency that sets General Water Services apart from the competition.

Segregated Resin
General Water Services maintains cation, anion, and mixed bed resins for specific customers. These resins will only be used for your plant and will not be mixed with any other company's ion exchange resins. Depending upon the agreement, the resin can be your property or General Water's ion exchange resins; we can use your tanks or ours. We'll regenerate the resin at our plant, put in the tanks, and return the tanks to you as required. Extra resin is tagged and stored in our warehouse for your future needs.

Complete Resin & Tank Traceability
Each General Water Services DI water exchange tank has its own serial number regardless of tank size. Serial number tracking is used in combination with resin lot traceability to track each DI tank and, its ion exchange resin lot, back to its applicable regeneration and retained sample. This gives you complete ion exchange resin traceability for any and all DI water tanks delivered to your site. This process is carried back even one step further in that all of General Water Services' ion exchange resin lots can also be traced back to the ion exchange resin manufacturer's production documentation.

For Further Information:
General Water Systems brochure.
General Water Systems product bulletin.

Aquamatic Valve & Control Lines Discontinued

In addition to the announcement of the A200 series impulse control stager being discontinued, the letter from Pentair has other Aquamatic discontinuations. The following Aquamatic Valve & Control Lines will be discontinued after March 13, 2009. Also, certain Aquamatic Valve & Control options will be discontinued after March 13, 2009. Orders can be placed until March 2, 2009. Contact Res-Kem if you need help finding a potential replacement.

Discontinued Aquamatic Valve & Control Lines:
Product Family: V82 Series
Product Type: Diaphragm valves
Description: High pressure brass line
Potential Replacement: V46 Series

Product Family:V44 Series
Product Type: Diaphragm valves
Description: Iron and brass isolated bonnet line
Potential Replacement: V42 Series, K55 Series

Product Family: 59 Series
Product Type: Stager
Description: 16 port brass stager line
Potential Replacement: 58 Series

Product Family: 96 Series
Product Type: Stager
Description: 8 port high pressure line

Discontinued Aquamatic Valve & Control Options:
Description: Drill and tap Options 5(all four bosses) and 7 (bosses #1 and #3) on K52 Series and K53 Series valves
Potential Replacement: Drill and tap Options 1-4, 6

Description: FKM (Viton) diaphragm on K53 Series
Potential Replacement: Buna-N diaphragm: K52 series FKM diaphragm

A200 Stager Control from Aquamatic Discontinued

Soon after we completed changes to our website, discussed in our previous blog post, a discontinuation notice was Res-Kem just received in the mail from Aquamatic about the A200 Stager Control. After March 13, 2009 the controller, also called an A200 Impluse Stager Control, will no longer be available. The reason given was "despite their lengthy time on the market, (these products) have experienced low demand and declining sales in recent years. As a result, Pentair is making the difficult decision to eliminate these lines so it may focus on growing its core Aquamatic Valve and Control business."

Possible Solution:
A potential replacement could be the 962 Stager Control series from Aquamatic. If you contact Res-Kem we can help you determine if it will work for your application and how it may need to be configured to work.

Aquamatic Stager Controls Information for GE/Osmonics

Res-Kem added a significant amount of information on Aquamatic Stager Controls to our website including Product Specifications, Manuals and Ordering Guides. We wanted to make the information more easily accessible for our customers and others who use Aquamatic stager controls in their water treatment equipment.

Res-Kem uses Aquamatic Stager Controls for many of the systems we manufacture. Stager controls are used to automatically control softeners, dealkalizers, sand filters, multi-media filters, cation and anion deionizers. Also, we use these same stager controls, with a valve nest, to retrofit old Permutit, and Brunermatic multiport valves. Also, given our system expertise, we service these units in the field.

Aquamatic Stager Controls:

Res-Kem uses Aquamatic Stager Controls for many of the systems we manufacture. As the name implies, it is comprised of an Aquamatic Stager and an Aquamatic Control. Res-Kem uses Aquamatic valves with a variety of stager control combinations to automate the operation and/or regeneration of valve nest type water softeners and filters. Aquamatic Stager Controls are used to automatically control softeners, dealkalizers, sand filters, multi-media filters, cation and anion deionizers. These same stager controls can be used with virtually any other valve manufacturer with pneumatic actuated valves ONLY if their actuators are air/spring. These manufacturers include Keystone, Bray, George Fisher +GF+, Hayward, and Asahi. Also, we use these same stager controls, with a valve nest, to retrofit old Permutit, and Brunermatic multiport valves.

Aquamatic 962 Stager Controls:
The AquaMatic 962 stager controls combine an AquaMatic stager with an Autotrol 962 series electronic control, mounted and prewired in a NEMA-rated enclosure. When combined with a flow meter, the series 962 electronic controls provide sophisticated, demand-based water conditioning by monitoring the amount of water used. Time-based and/or external signal initiation is also available as a standard feature.

Aquamatic A100 Stager Controls:
This series of AquaMatic controls combines an electromechanical timer with a stager. The A100 series initiates a regeneration based on a time set on the built-in time clock.

Aquamatic A200 Stager Controls:
This series of AquaMatic controls combines an electromechanical timer with a stager. The A200 series initiates a regeneration when a signal is received from a water meter, sensor, pressure differential switch, push button or other remote device.

Aquamatic 7000A Programmable Regeneration Controller (DISCONTINUED):
These units are no longer sold. Through some careful engineering, the 7000A controller can be replaced with a Aquamatic 962 Stager Control. The Aquamatic 7000A was an electronic programmable regeneration designed to control the regeneration of filters and ion exchange processes. The 7000A was used in combination with an Aquamatic 48 Series Stager, Aquamatic 51 Series Stager, or Aquamatic 58 Series Stager.

Aquamatic Stager:

Added are product specifications on Aquamatic Stagers. A stager is a motor-driven rotary multiport pilot valve, which is used to control a set of individual diaphragm valves in a predefined sequence.

There are five stager designs available:

Aquamatic Series 48 brass stager with six ports. The 48 stager can control typical softener or filter systems as well as sequential backwash filters.

Aquamatic Series 51 brass stagers with eight ports. Used for more complex systems such as non-standard softeners, twin alternating softeners or filters.

Aquamatic Series 96 brass stagers with eight ports. Used for more complex systems such as non-standard softeners, twin alternating softeners or filters.
The 96 stager design is similar to that of the 51, but is rated for 250 psi (17 bar) and used for high pressure systems.

Aquamatic Series 58 PVC stager with sixteen ports. Used for more complex systems such as non-standard softeners, twin alternating softeners or filters.

Aquamatic Series 59 brass stager with sixteen ports. Used for more complex systems such as non-standard softeners, twin alternating softeners or filters.

Given our expertise building systems with Aquamatic Stager Controls, we can help you select the correct parts, select/troubleshoot stager controls or service stager in the field.