Koch Talks Membranes
Alden Whitney, director of sales at Koch Membrane Systems, sat down with Water Online Radio for this live interview from the show floor at WEFTEC 2011 in Los Angeles. Whitney discussed the state of the industry and the impact Koch’s products have for desalination and reverse osmosis (RO). Listen or read on to learn more.
Todd Schnick: We are back, broadcasting live from the Los Angeles Convention Center and the tradeshow floor for WEFTEC. I am Todd Schnick, joined by my co-host, Todd Youngblood. Todd, we are kicking off hour three and going strong.
Todd Youngblood: Hour three and the crowd is building and building. There are more folks here every minute, it seems.
Todd Schnick: I have a lot of fans.
Todd Youngblood: They’re not your fans. I hate to break this to you.
Todd Schnick: Maybe they are the fans of our next guest, who I am really excited to welcome. He is the sales director of Koch Membrane Systems. Welcome, Alden Whitney, to Water Online Radio.
Alden: Thanks for having me.
Todd Schnick: Before we get into a conversation, why don’t you take a few minutes and tell us a little about you, your background, and a little about Koch.
Alden: Sure. I’ve been involved in the water/wastewater industry for a number of different companies a little over 20 years. I came to Koch a little over six years ago.
One of the reasons I went over to Koch was it offered a great opportunity to get involved with a company that’s got a lot going on with their membrane system groups, a variety of different products across a variety of different applications. It offered a little more than I saw out there with things going on.
Todd Schnick: Alden, what are the big trends that you’re seeing in the industry now, things your customers are really focused on trying to solve?
Alden: There’s a lot of trending towards water reuse, recycle. I think, really, across the board for membranes and membrane products, if you look at things like desalination out there where you’re dealing with sea water or highly brackish water sources, that’s always been a trend. But you see things getting into wastewater treatment now – it’s something a little different than you dealt with several years ago. That’s a real high area of growth.
Todd Schnick: What’s Koch doing to address these trends?
Alden: Koch offers a very wide range of products. We offer products that service the desalination industry, products in nano and reverse osmosis. We also have a full product line … in fact, we’re introducing, or have introduced here in the last six months or so, a new membrane for the drinking water industry and the low-pressure surface water area and the groundwater under the influence. As well as a membrane for hollow fiber submerged membrane, a vacuum system type membrane that deals with membrane bioreactors and tertiary applications.
Todd Schnick: Alden, how big of an influence is regulation on what you are doing. What kind of impact is it having on your customer base?
Alden: It’s huge. If you look at what is required from a pathogen standpoint, that’s what really drives the drinking water for the lower pressure stuff. If you’re dealing with TDS limits and certain constituent limits, it drives a lot of the brackish water and RO stuff out there.
Certainly, when you are talking about wastewater discharges you can have, as you know, a lot of limitation, a lot of attention paid to discharging water, especially nutrients these days out across the U.S.
Todd Schnick: Alden, help Todd and I and especially the thousands of professionals in the Water Online community better, truly understand the value you are delivering to your customers by sharing with us a specific recent win that you’ve achieved on behalf of one of your customers.
Alden: We just won a very large project down in South America, a project that was based around an MBR type system. What it allowed us to do was take a group of industrial companies that were using a significant amount of the water resources available to the community and take and use an MBR membrane and an MBR designed system that would allow them to recycle and recover this water to meet the needs of the industrial group while freeing up fresh water sources for the community.
Todd Schnick: Alden, we broadcasted at last year’s WEFTEC. There has been a heck of a lot more conversation this year about emerging markets in South America. Why is that? That seems to be a really growing business opportunity for people in the industry. Why do you suppose that is happening?
Alden: I think there’s a lot more attention being paid. Especially in countries – when you look at Brazil and Chile – there’s a lot more attention being paid to water, sources of water, limitations, not having enough water for communities. I think there’s a look at water reuse as well as more attention being paid to discharge limitations.
Todd Schnick: Alden, it’s hard to have a conversation with anybody these days without the economy popping up. How has it made life more challenging for you, and what kind of opportunities has this tough economy opened up for you?
Alden: I’ll tell you right now it’s tougher to see the opportunities at the moment. All joking aside, it has been a big impact along the lines of municipal applications. Certainly, there’s less money available. It’s harder to get funding for a lot of these projects.
There are a lot of projects out there that are going forward, but not in the numbers on the municipal side as four or five years ago. Industrially, it’s a real challenge right now. There are a lot of companies that seem to have a fair bit of money available, but in many cases it seems they’re not doing a whole lot with it right now because there are too many balls in the air.
There’s too much uncertainty. That’s something we’ll hopefully move through in the next year, I was going to say months. It’s probably more like the next year.
Todd Schnick: Is Koch exhibiting here at WEFTEC?
Alden: Yes, we are.
Todd Schnick: What is your principle objective of participating in an event of this nature?
Alden: We’ve been involved with WEFTEC for many, many years. We do a fair bit on the industrial and municipal waste treatment side, so we have membrane solutions across the board from, like I mentioned, our spiral-wound stuff and nano and RO, tubular membranes that deal with a lot of industrial applications and wastewater treatment applications. Of course the MBR, which is for both industrial and municipal treatment applications.
Something like this gives us exposure. We are out here with any number of groups that deal in the wastewater treatment industry. Typically, we’re talking to engineers. We’re talking to clients and it’s a good place to make people aware of what you do and what you have to offer.
Todd Schnick: Alden, in addition to the economy, we’re also hearing a lot of folks talk about collaboration and how every day it’s getting a little bit more important to be working with other people with knowledge and suppliers of various products and services. Talk a little about how you are collaborating with other players in the industry.
Alden: We work with a number of groups. We try to look at certain partnerships that will help us focus our energies more successfully in different areas of the industry. Whether it is people out there that have sales forces dealing with say, they may have people out running wastewater treatment systems or things, water systems.
We work pretty closely with several partners and are always looking to try to expand that. Again, it’s a challenge, but it’s something that we look as it helps us leverage our efforts out there in various industries.
Todd Schnick: Alden, I’m sorry to say it, but we’re out of time. Before we let you go, share with the audience how they can contact Koch and learn more about the work you are doing.
Alden: Certainly, if they’re at the show they can come by booth 5015. We have a number of different things to show you and certainly would love to talk to you.
Otherwise, you can contact us at our headquarters in Wilmington, MA, just outside of Boston. We can be reached either by phone or email here. You can reach me directly at 978-694-7058 or the company at 978-694-7000.
Todd Schnick: Alright, Alden Whitney, it was a pleasure having you today. Thanks for joining us.
Alden: Thanks you, guys. I appreciate the opportunity.
Todd Youngblood: Thanks, Alden.
Todd Schnick: That wraps this segment. On behalf of Todd Youngblood, I’m Todd Schnick. Water Online Radio will be right back.