Economics of Condensate Polishing

On August 25, 2010, Res-Kem's Kevin Preising will make a presentation entitled "Reuse It – Don’t Lose It! The Economics of Condensate Polishing" as part of the Industrial Processing on line tradeshow presented by GlobalSpec.

Abstract of Presentation:
In today's environment of economic pressure and high energy costs, engineers are constantly asked to do more with less. A condensate polisher helps meet this challenge.

Condensate Polishers:

• Save energy by reclaiming heat normally sent to drain


• Save water by reducing boiler blow down


• Reduce water treatment chemical usage.
  
  This presentation will use real world examples to show how condensate polishing reduces fuel consumption and minimizes water side fouling in medium- and low-pressure steam plants typical of the food, beverage, and chemical process industries. A follow-up Q&A will address technical aspects of condensate polishing set-up, operation, and maintenance.
  
  Key Take-Aways:


• Understand how a condensate polisher and water softener compare


• Learn how to justify the expenditure of a condensate polisher to save energy, water, and chemicals


• Know where to add a condensate polisher to treat your steam condensate


• The ROI of a condensate polisher is less than 10 months!

Kevin's presentation will take place from 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM EDT (12:30 PM - 1:30 PM PDT)

Click here to register for the event.

Res-Kem Loses $70,000 Water System Equipment Job

Our service group so successfully helped a food manufacturing company they no longer needed the new system we had quoted for about $70,000!

The System:
Customer has an older dual, 40 cubic foot parallel operating nitrate system required for manufacturing their food products. The normal flow rate is 80 to 85 gpm. The estimated age of the system 15 to 20 years, resin was in service for 10 years but was recently tested and found to be in shape to run another 6 to 12 months. They were in the process of gathering quotes for replacement equipment because they were experiencing low flow, 20 to 30 gpm, reason unknown, from unit #1.

The Problem:
On Tuesday, June 1, the #1 unit failed reducing the product flow to 5 to 10 gpm. As stated above, the normal flow rate is 80 to 85 gpm in a properly operating unit. We were contacted to see if we could service the unit but they could not be down longer than 12 hours due to production demand. They had no information on the system so we didn’t know what type of internals were in the vessel, but believed they were manufactured of black iron.

The Solution:
Res-Kem came on Wednesday, June 2 with two of our installation technicians to service the nitrate removal system. They vacuumed all the resin, gravel support bed but also encountered either anthracite or activated carbon. The internals were found to be manufactured of Schedule 80 PVC and in good condition. One of the technicians backwashed the system prior to refilling the tank and found no blockage within the distributors.

The new resin, Purolite A-520E, was picked up at Purolite by our Res-Kem truck and delivered to the customer the same day of the service. The customer and Res-Kem technicians decided to refill the tank and place it back into service. This was done and the system was operating at 85 gpm.

Start time 8:30AM – Completion 2:00PM
Would have been sooner but they had to bucket the resin into the tank because we could only get a super sack of resin from the manufacturer, due to the urgency, and they had no water pressure to educt the resin into the vessel.

The Bottomline:
They are thrilled with the service and limited downtime and we are now doing the #2 unit, but they are delaying the purchase of the replacement system.

Industrial UV System Pricing

The Res-Kem web site regularly receives leads for industrial, commercial, residential, and municipal ultraviolet water purifiers. Res-Kem has found that a standalone UV system has become a commodity. With this in mind, Res-Kem will only quote industrial, commercial and municipal UV systems when there is other equipment is being sold.

Examples are a UV system used in combination with rental deionization and filtration systems, or a UV system as part of our modular ultrapure water (UPW) system.

RO Systems for Industrial & Commerical Water Treatment

Res-Kem now offers four new Reverse Osmosis (RO) system series with product flow rates of up to 700 gpm.

XL Series RO 12 - 700 GPM
These RO systems can control your entire water treatment system. By simply activating standard features through a Color Panelview Plus touchscreen HMI, the operation of the pretreatment, RO system, RO tank level, recirculation pump, and post-treatment DI is coordinated, controlled and monitored. Virtually seamless operation of any system is realized. Through the X-Web™ service, we can be remotely monitor the entire XL Series RO system and alarms.

Built to last design with stainless steel frame and high pressure piping, high efficiency stainless steel multi-stage Grundfos pump with TEFC motor and Dow Filmtec XLE 440 low energy membranes. XL Series RO has features only available on custom industrial systems.

CL and CLD Series RO 3,200 - 69,000 GPD

These RO systems can control your entire water treatment system. By simply activating standard features through a Color Panelview Plus touchscreen HMI, the operation of the pretreatment, RO system, RO tank level, recirculation pump, and post-treatment DI is coordinated, controlled and monitored. Virtually seamless operation of any system is realized. Through the X-Web™ service, we can be remotely monitor the entire system and alarms .

These system have a rugged design with stainless steel frame and high pressure piping, high efficiency stainless steel multi-stage pump with TEFC motor and Dow Filmtec XLE 4040 low energy membranes. These systems have features only available on custom industrial systems.

CLT Series RO 3,200 - 34,500 GPD
The CLT Series RO has a rugged design with stainless steel frame and high pressure piping, high efficiency stainless steel multi-stage pump with TEFC motor and Dow Filmtec XLE 4040 low energy membranes. Has features only available on custom industrial systems.

ML Series RO 1,500 - 8,900 GPD
The ML Series RO has a rugged design with stainless steel frame and high pressure piping, high efficiency positive displacement pump and Dow Filmtec XLE 4040 low energy membranes. These systems have features only available on custom industrial systems

Softener Service at Power Plant in New Jersey

After reviewing our blog posts over the past 4+ years, I realized we have not talked much about our site service team. Our normal service area is in New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. On a case-by-case basis we have gone substantially further.

Situation:
At a power plant in coastal New Jersey, a triple water softener system needed to have a media exchange. Each steel vessel has 20 cuft of softening resin. Res-Kem brought our trailer mounted vacuum.


Services Provided:
Manned by two Res-Kem service people, the entire process of resin removal, underdrain inspection, and refilling took only 5 hours to complete from start to finish. "We could have been done about 1-1.5 hours sooner, but we couldn't shutdown all three units at once" said Joe Urbans III Res-Kem lead rebed technician because we needed to work around the plant's operation.

Testimony:
Our sales representative at the site stated "The Res Kem team was extremely professional! They executed all of the work safely, they worked quickly and efficiently - regularly checking in with the customer. The station engineer was very pleased with the work".

Nalco Acquires Res-Kem and General Water-Denise’s Story

On April 1st, I was fortunate enough to have sold my company, which I have been building for over 26 years, to Nalco Company. We are a wholly owned subsidiary now and our official name is Res-Kem LLC although we will continue to go by Res-Kem General Water.

As with every privately held business in America it is imperative to have a succession plan in place. As responsible business owners, my business partner and husband Bob Hader and I developed a business and team that would continue to thrive whether or not we are able to work. The team of people who work at our company are the best at what they do and I’ve worked hard to make sure no one was irreplaceable, including me.

I know things don’t always go as planned. I wasn’t looking to sell the business, we had a great 2009 in spite of the recession, but we were at a point where it was time to consider the next steps. These steps always include investing money in the business and it was time to consider all of my options. During the past year I’ve explored all the options and and was lucky enough to have been approached by Nalco during this evaluation.

My goals were to:
1. Continue to grow the business and secure the employment of my co-workers. As a family business, my coworkers include two brothers, a nephew, and many people who are like family. Those of you in small businesses know what I’m talking about.
2. Continue to take care of all of customers in the same fashion. We have a reputation to uphold. We are a business to business company but most importantly we’re a people company. We work hard for and like our customers.
3. Expand the company so rewarding manufacturing jobs will be available for the next generation.
4. Sell the company to people who would like for me to continue operating it. I may be in denial about my age, but I’m still not old enough to retire!
5. Make a deal with people I like – I had to like the people I would sell the company to.

So here’s the bottom line. I have accomplished all my goals and am excited for the future. As I said before the acquisition, we are not a chemical company. We distribute, service, and assemble water treatment equipment including service DI. I want to assure each of our customers using a different chemical company that we will continue to do business as always and not be bringing in the local Nalco rep. We are simply doing for Nalco the same things we’ve been doing for years – supplying equipment, services and SDI.

Nalco Acquires Res-Kem and General Water

It has been a very busy day at Res-Kem and General Water. All of us are being contacted by many of our customers after reading the news release about Nalco's acquisition of the Res-Kem and General Water businesses. All of us in Res-Kem and General Water are excited to be part of this organization. Also, as stated in the news release, "This acquisition improves Nalco's ability to provide customers with the equipment, supplies and accessories for a total industrial water solution in general industry markets throughout the Northeastern United States, specifically in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland."

Industrial Water Softener Skid-Mounted Shipped

I try to keep up with our shipments, but with all the systems going out recently, I missed posting this dual tank industrial water softener out about two weeks ago.
The system is a dual tank alternating, skid mounted, water softener, including interconnecting piping and isolation valves. GE Aquamatic composite diaphragm valves are used for system automation. A GE Aquamatic 962 series controller opens and closes the Aquamatic valves during regeneration. The tanks are epoxy lined carbon steel with an epoxy exterior and 100 psi ASME code. Face piping consists of Schedule 80 PVC pipe and fittings. Regeneration initiated by either gallon throughput or timeclock.

New Water Treatment Techology

In WaterOnline, one of the newsletters I receive, there was a synopsis of an article published in Nature Nanotechnology on March 21, 2010 entitled "Direct seawater desalination by ion concentration polarization" by Sung Jae Kim, Sung Hee Ko, Kwan Hyoung Kang & Jongyoon Han.

In the Water Online Article, it describes "A new approach to desalination being developed by researchers at MIT and in Korea could lead to small, portable desalination units that could be powered by solar cells or batteries and could deliver enough fresh water to supply the needs of a family or small village. As an added bonus, the system would also remove many contaminants, viruses and bacteria at the same time."

In the actual abstract of article in Nature Nantechnology, it states "A shortage of fresh water is one of the acute challenges facing the world today. An energy-efficient approach to converting sea water into fresh water could be of substantial benefit, but current desalination methods require high power consumption and operating costs or large-scale infrastructures, which make them difficult to implement in resource-limited settings or in disaster scenarios... Rather than competing with larger desalination plants, the method could be used to make small- or medium-scale systems, with the possibility of battery-powered operation."

In the "Next Big Future Blog", there are some excellent drawings extracted from the journal depicting how the process works.

Custom Manual Water Softeners Shipped

Last week, we shipped two custom water softeners. The customer was using the softeners to treat the water feeding plant safety showers. Res-Kem has the flexibility to take our standard industrial water softener designs and modify them to meet a specific customer's requirements for virtually the same cost as our standard systems.

For example:
The plant has strict explosion-proof requirements. Even with the multitude of standard designs Res-Kem has using Fleck, Autotrol, Aquamatic, and Bray valves and Aquamatic electro-mechanical or Allen Bradley controls, we collectively determined the cost to accomplish an automatic, explosion-proof design was too great for the application.

So, each system is a single tank unit with manual regeneration. The face piping was Schedule 80 PVC. The valves were true union ball valves. Polyethylene lined composite fiberglass tanks with laminate glass exterior, 150 psi ASME code. Also, the customer requested a pressure relief valve for over pressure protection.