Chemtrac Perfects Its Niche In Instrumentation

John Clark, VP and general manager of Chemtrac, talks to Water Online Radio about the capabilities and importance of process monitoring and control in water, wastewater, and industrial processes.

Todd Schnick: And we’re coming to you live from Dallas, Texas. This is day four of AWWA ACE 2012 and Water Online Radio. I’m your host Todd Schnick, joined by my colleague, Todd Youngblood. Todd, we are flying high in the afternoon on day two.

Todd Youngblood: I’ll tell you what: I felt like my head was going to explode a little bit earlier, but I think I got it back on track now. I’m starting to absorb some of this information. Not all of it.

Todd Schnick: Yeah.

Todd Youngblood: But holy cow.

Todd Schnick: We’re learning some cool stuff. I expect no doubt we’re going to learn more from our next guest. I want to welcome John Clark, who’s the vice president and general manager with Chemtrac. Welcome to the show.

John: Thank you, guys.

Todd Schnick: John, before we get into it, take a second and tell us a little bit about you and your background.

John: Well, I started with Chemtrac back at the very end of 1997. So I’ve been with them for quite a long time now. And I started off actually with the company, kind of one of those stories where I started at a lower position and worked my way up.

And the great thing about Chemtrac is it is a great location, and a great company to work for. Bob Bryant was the original owner of the company and he promoted from within.

He trains his guys, he gets them out there, get a good field experience. So I started off on water treatment not really knowing anything. But after a decade of being out there working in the plants, working with customers, busting my butt, getting the sales, I worked up in the company. So it’s great.

Todd Schnick: Tell us a little more about Chemtrac. What kind of things are you doing to provide for your customers?

John: Sure thing, yeah. Chemtrac is a company that’s a little unique in the instrumentation world, I think. We provide a service. So we’re not just selling instrumentation.

We do a lot of consultative-type sales. So where we sell products a lot of other guys sell, the one thing that we do differently is that we go in and help provide the actual knowledge to make it work, and to tackle unique challenges in water treatment. It kind of worked out that way.

Because one of the products that we have, streaming current, is a technology that just simply does not work everywhere. You got to know how to apply it, and there’s a lot of challenges there.

So we had to go out and do a lot of demonstrations. We had to learn process. With some instrumentation suppliers, they don’t really need to understand process so much, to sell a thicker instrument.

But with this technology, you really had to learn the process, understand how things work, to be able to do that – to be able to sell it.

Todd Schnick: Now, Chemtrac has a reputation, and is known for a couple of things in the marketplace. But there’s been some new developments recently. Tell us about some of those.

John: Yeah. Yeah. And just to kind of review on that, like I said, when we started the company it was streaming current monitors, which is used for coagulation control. So what we did was basically sell a product that helped a plant optimize liquid-solid separation, or clarification.

But the primary thing we were controlling was the coagulant and addition. We did that from 1985 to the mid ’90s. And that was the primary thing that we did. And the previous owner of the company, again, was Bob Bryant.

A lot of these guys here at this show would know Bob, because he literally got in his car, and drove all over the U.S. Kind of like a vacuum cleaner sales guy, right? He would show up at the door and, “I got this product,” they had never heard of it, he’d go there and demo it.

So he built up a reputation and grew the company from that. And then about the mid ’90s, we started selling another technology called particle counters. And particle counters are used for optimizing filtration performance. There were a couple of events, crypto outbreaks in Milwaukee and Carrollton, Georgia, that really drew attention to this technology.

Turbidity had been out there, and it’s still out there as a regulatory device. But they knew that this device, turbidity wasn’t an adequate measurement for all situations. And, specifically, when you have filter breakthrough events occurring, particle counters can give you a lot more sensitivity and a lot more detail about what’s going on.

So we were selling these technologies for quite some time. They fit together very well, they complemented each other. Like I said, we’re kind of focusing on liquid-solid separation, so monitoring filter performance is key to the service we provide.

And then, more recently, we started providing other products that fit in with what we do. We didn’t as a company want to try to be one of these companies that does everything, just because we can go out there and buy these technologies, or develop these technologies. We didn’t try to be everything to everyone.

We just wanted to focus on this niche that we’re very much experts in. So this is primarily what we got into, was disinfection monitoring and control. It fits very well. Coagulation is very dependent upon proper control of disinfection and pH.

And so we bought all these type of new analyzers, and we’re currently selling a device that we feel is a very reliable probe for monitoring chlorine, free total chlorine, chlorine oxide, ozone, and then we can also do pH/ORP connectivity.

And we try to help — [we’re] advertising that. We provide these products now. We have been providing them for, I think, about seven years now. So we’re starting to grow a reputation now as a company that also provides these types of technologies. And like I said, it all fits in very well with what we do.

And the more recent product that we just brought on in the last few years is UV analyzers. And some of these products, obviously, we don’t manufacture ourselves. What we try to do as a company is, we try to make what we can make. We design and engineer what we know how to do.

But, just sometimes, we know we can’t do it better than someone else. So we’ll go out and find a product that someone else is making, and bring that into our line. But we’re pretty focused on only providing products that are solid, reliable products that are going to do what they're designed to do.

Todd Schnick: John, it seems like everything you're saying is really wrapped around the knowledge base that’s contained. The meat between the ears, if you will, of the folks you work for.

John: Yeah. That’s right.

Todd Schnick: And you mentioned “unique challenges.” Can you give us an example or two of some unique challenges that, if I’m managing a water utility and I’ve got some crazy problem that makes me think I ought to call you?

John: Yeah. Right. Well, there’s a couple. One of the things that’s the reason why we got involved with UV analyzers and organics, is because of the concern with disinfection byproducts that organics present. But when you're looking at coagulation control, it used to be they were primarily concerned with turbidity and turbidity removal.

Well now we’re concerned with organics removal. The technology we sell, streaming current monitors, what a lot of people don’t realize is how responsive streaming current is to organics. I mean, organics have a huge impact on charge, and that’s what these devices are designed to do, is measure charge and control charge neutralization.

So when plants are struggling with organics issues and they need a way to properly control and optimize coagulant addition for removal of organics, that’s where our technology comes into play, streaming current monitors. The UV analyzer helps us document and show to customers that our instruments are doing this – that they're actually optimizing coagulant addition to the point that we’re getting good organics removal.

So, like I said, a lot of plants try to run things manually, doing jar testing or eyeballing their process. And of course, you can’t do that very efficiently.

But with our instrument being online, real-time, continuous monitoring, they can maintain a more efficient control. And they can reduce things like the amount of coagulants they're feeding, reduce the amount of sludge they create, and slide coagulant flock, so they can lower their operational costs. That’s one.

Then another one that we do a lot of in some municipal applications, but mainly industrial, is reverse osmosis pretreatment. We take a lot of pride in the fact that we can piece together the information that our instruments generate, and make it such that we can help them optimize their processes in a way that these guys never realized they could be optimized.

This is an example: take a sand filter. A lot of guys look at a sand filter and they think, well, it’s a sand-in-a-can kind of approach. Not a lot you can do with it. You just run water through it, and you get water out of it, and it is what it is. What they don’t realize is there are little things they can do to optimize that.

Such as adjusting the run times. Especially industrial facilities, they run these filters for much too short of a time. They don’t realize that they're backwashing way too often. And as a result, they're sending a lot of particulate down to their RO and fouling their RO membranes.

So we show them with our instruments that, “Listen: these filters can run longer, and they’ll run better if you’d run them longer.” And then we also show them the solutions such as feeding filter aids. A lot of RO users are little concerned with feeding a product like a filter aid, which is a polymer.

They’re afraid that product is going to damage their RO or foul their RO. But with our technology and our knowledge, we can show them how to properly apply a filter aid program such that they can greatly enhance filter performance and reduce RO fouling. And do it in a way that’s safe and effective.

Todd Schnick: John, we could talk to you all afternoon. Sadly, we’ve got to let you go. Before we do let you go, how can people get in touch with you, and where can they learn more about the good work at Chemtrac?

John: Sure. Yeah. Chemtrac’s located in Norcross, Georgia, and our website is www.chemtrac.com. And you can call us at 770-449-6233.

Todd Schnick: All right. John Clark, Vice President and General Manager of Chemtrac, it was great to have you. Thanks so much for joining us.

John: Thank you, Todd and Todd.

Todd Schnick: All right. Well, that wraps our segment. On behalf of our guest, John Clark, my co-host, Todd Youngblood, all of us at Water Online, I am Todd Schnick. We’ll be right back with our next guest.