Pinnacle Ozone Solutions Delivering Natural Disinfection

Bud Leffler, CTO of Pinnacle Ozone Solutions, sat down with Water Online Radio for this live interview from the show floor at WEFTEC 2011 in Los Angeles. Leffler explains ozone, its characteristics, and the benefits it has for the disinfection of water. Listen or read on to learn more.

Todd Schnick: We are back broadcasting live from the Los Angeles Convention Center and the tradeshow floor of WEFTEC. I am Todd Schnick, joined by my colleague, Todd Youngblood. Todd, we’re having a good time.

Todd Youngblood: We are having a great time, and this place is not slowing down. You’d think this far into some of these tradeshows folks start to tucker out a little bit being on their feet all day, but I mean it hasn’t backed off a bit.

Todd Schnick: I told you yesterday that Tuesday was going to be the crazy day.

Todd Youngblood: Well, really, it's been like that.

Todd Schnick: Well, this next guest is going to add to the craziness. We are really going to have a lot of fun with this guy. His name is Bud Leffler. He is the CTO of Pinnacle Ozone Solutions. Bud, welcome to Water Online Radio.

Bud: Oh, I am so glad to be here.

Todd Schnick: Well, we’re glad to have you with us. Before we get into a conversation, why don't you take a few minutes and tell us just a little about you, about your background, and what you are doing for Pinnacle.

Bud: I have been around for a long time. I had about 17 years in General Electric, where I ended up as manager of their large projects, and I went on to become vice president of Siemens. I’ve been president of a couple of companies – one which went public called Zaxis. I now am a partner in Pinnacle Ozone Solutions.

Todd Youngblood: You've been a part of some pretty big organizations. That's some pretty exciting work sounds like you've done over your background.

Bud: It has been a really exciting career, but all of those things that you do in the past really lead up to who you are today and what you're doing.

Todd Youngblood: Yeah, Bud, when I hear ozone I think of the ozone layer and too much sunburn and all, but something tells me that's not the kind of ozone application that you’re thinking about.

Bud: No, but ozone is really what protects you from the sun. It is actually the sun reacting with a layer up there of oxygen and it converts it to ozone, and then that provides us some protection.

But we use ozone in our modern-day world to take care of disinfection in water, to clarify some of our streams of exhaust gases, and remediate the earth when it needs it. It's just nature's natural method of disinfection.

Todd Youngblood: Well, tell us how you're serving your customers. So what makes the Pinnacle Ozone system different than other ozone systems?

Bud: Everybody who has ever worked with ozone loves what it does because it's at least 15-times more powerful than chlorine, and it doesn't give off any disinfection byproduct.

Whereas, if you use chlorine you get carcinogens, you get things that can pass through it like pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors, and ozone takes care of all of that.

Todd Youngblood: You have used the words “natural” and “nature,” and this is, as I understand it, a relatively new application – or using technology that's a new application. Why is that? Why hasn't it been around forever?

Bud: When they talk about it being natural, when there’s a lightning spark and you smell that fresh air, that's ozone. When the sea turns over and it rolls, you smell a different freshness in the air, and that's ozone being created in the top layer of the ocean’s surface.

Todd Youngblood: How has this technology been received by the marketplace?

Bud: Fantastic, because a lot of our applications are occurring because of our new technology. It used to be you had to have to have these great big ozone generators. You would turn them on and they were uncontrollable. They just produced the same amount of ozone all the time.

This system is designed to be totally controlled by a computer, and the computer can cut the power in half and then the output turns in half. So you can manage exactly as much chemistry as the water needs.

Todd Schnick: How efficient is this technology?

Bud: It's extremely efficient, because nature changes the amount of disinfectant required by water. If it's summer, you have a lot of bio in the water; in the winter, you might have very little. By reacting to just what the water needs, you might be operating at less than a tenth of the demand of the system, where before you made all that ozone you don't need.

Todd Youngblood: Is this changing the market in any way?

Bud: We’re seeing applications that couldn't have been filled before. As a good for instance, we have two systems with 400 pounds of ozone – and, remember, ozone used to just be in grams. We’re talking 400 pounds in each trailer operating remotely in Alaska without anybody attending them, and we monitor them in Cocoa, FL.

Todd Schnick: Well, tell me what exactly a QuadBlock is, and how many of these things do you have in service?

Bud: Well, a QuadBlock is actually four ozone generators – that’s why we call it a quad – built into one block, and each of those generators is 5 pounds. And these are totally independent machines – you can plug it into oxygen and power and you would be producing ozone.

We put as many as those in service as a customer needs, and then we can automatically take them off as demand diminishes. We have hundreds of them in QuadBox service. If you look at independent 5-pound generators, they're in the thousands. And they are in any application of ozone you can imagine – from food processing to cleaning…

Todd Youngblood: Bud, you talked about systems in Alaska being controlled from Florida, and that's kind of intriguing. Talk a little bit more about that and the value that it provides to your customers.

Bud: Chuck Smith, who’s the managing partner for Pinnacle Ozone Systems, has an iPhone. That iPhone gets two e-mails a day, and they come from these trailers, and they call and they tell him, “Hey, everything's working fine. Have a good night’s sleep.”

He can do anything with that iPhone that you could normally do standing in front of a system and operating it. So he can do everything from upload new software, to do all of the controls, to know that everything is okay.

Todd Schnick: Are you guys exhibiting here at WEFTEC?

Bud: No. This is the first year we’ve missed, but will be back again next year.

Todd Youngblood: But you're obviously here. What are your principal objectives of attending an event like this?

Bud: We have a number of large projects in the process of design and construction, and so a lot of this is to meet those types of vendors. We have a number of people at the show that use our systems in their process.

They might be making something for waste treatment, and part of their process is to add ozone. We supply that. Someone might be making drinking water products, and we supply the ozone to them.

Todd Youngblood: Bud, the more I listen to you talk about this technology the more I wonder what happens if the demand for it spikes and goes through the roof? Is that good news or bad news for you?

Bud: Well, our product is the first one in ozone where it's been made to be mass-produced. So it's matter of, primarily, machine tools to make the QuadBlocks, whereas before you had to make a humongous tank, have it pressurized, sealed, and lamp bulbs put in – it could be thousands of bulbs. This is nothing like that at all. You can make as many of these as our demand goes to.

Todd Youngblood: So the manufacturing side of it is fairly straightforward?

Bud: Absolutely.

Todd Youngblood: Interesting.

Bud: We have several things that we’re working on – because we work through other OEMs that take our products to market – that will have huge demands for them. One of them is a process we are working on to put ballast treatment into ships, where you take the water that you pick up, you kill everything in that water, so that you don't bring it to San Francisco and LA and discharge it. And then the water has to be so fish can swim in it the minute it's discharged, and we use ozone for that product – and there's 35,000 of those systems going to be required by 2015.

Todd Schnick: Bud, I hate to say it, but we are out of time, so we’re not going to be able to hear you sing. But before we do let you go, please share with the audience how they can contact Pinnacle and learn more about the good works that you are doing.

Bud: Pinnacle Ozone – that's our website – pinnacleozone.com. Or they can contact me; my cell phone is (561)909-9084.

Todd Schnick: Bud, it was a real pleasure having you. Thanks for joining us today.

Bud: Been a lot of fun. I feel special. Thank you.

Todd Youngblood: You are, but no singing until after the mics are off.

Todd Schnick: Okay, that wraps this segment. On behalf of Todd Youngblood, I’m Todd Schnick Water Online Radio will be right back.