Making Sense Of Lead Free, Low Lead, And No Lead Terminology Post Flint, there has been a deeper focus in the service line business around the presence of lead in service brass. In particular, the plethora of information that has arisen, referencing terms such as low lead, no lead or lead free. Water Talk sat down with Dave Cole, Central District Manager from Mueller Company at WEFTEC 2017 to make sense of it all.  Continue Reading...

Still Classic, Still Innovating: Enduring Solids Removal Expertise Duperon Corporation is the inventor of the FlexRake barscreen, which has enjoyed widespread use at wastewater treatment plants for many years, coveted for its ability to remove solids in a robust, reliable package. And while copycat barscreens have recently come along, Duperon's classic design and service experience are proving hard to match, according to company president Mark Turpin. In this Water Talk interview, Turpin describes product...  Continue Reading...

New Tools For Improving Membrane Bioreactors Toray Membrane USA introduced an aptly-named product at WEFTEC 2017, the NHP (New High Performance) module for membrane bioreactors (MBRs). Toray's Peter Waldron sat down with Water Online to discuss how the NHP, which features thin membrane flat sheets densely packed into easily interchangeable cassettes, differs from current industry offerings and how these features benefit MBR operation.  Continue Reading...

Quality Control Leads To Quality Water, Beer The importance and utility of sensors for delivering precious drinking water — and beer — is of topic in this conversation with MJ Peters of Sensorex. The company provides UVT-LED sensors for monitoring UV transmittance, offering quality control for advanced treatment applications such as potable water reuse. One such application was the AZ Pure Water Brew Challenge, where recycled water was used to make beer.  Continue Reading...

Optimizing Activated Sludge Mixing Mixing activated sludge to a velocity of 0.03 meters/second is important because it keeps bacteria in motion, avoids sedimentation and optimizes the biological wastewater treatment process.  Water Talk recently caught up with Michael Lebkuecher, Director of Product Management for Solids Handling Pumps and Rainer Kutzko, Senior Project Engineer, both with KSB to learn more about mixing considerations.  Continue Reading...

Drumming Up Chemical Injection The operating ranges for chemical injection need to be large because of the variability of flow in many treatment operations. As Bill McDowell, Vice President of Operations with Blue White Industries explains in this Water Talk interview, “You might be down to as low as 5 or 10 milliliters a minute and then one hour later; you might need to pump 15 gallons a minute out of the same pump and through the same sensor.”  Continue Reading...

Tackling Net Zero Energy Head On One way to control energy costs at the wastewater treatment plant is to remove as much organic waste as possible at the head of the plant, reducing the load going to aeration. In this Water Talk interview, Marc Roehl, Vice President and General Manager of the Municipal Wastewater Division with Evoqua, discusses the concept of Net Zero Energy and some of the ways a treatment plant can move to produce as much energy as it uses.  Continue Reading...

Decentralization Grows With Worldwide Property Development Expansion One of the trends in water and wastewater treatment over the past decade has been a growing demand for decentralized systems. Water Talk recently caught up with Nii Mensah, General Manager of Fluence USA, to learn more about the solutions that the new company (formed by the merger of RWL Water and Emefcy) is bringing to market to address communities’ treatment needs  Continue Reading...

Predictive Maintenance Enabled By Moving Secured Data To The Cloud Cloud-based monitoring and reporting was all the rage at WEFTEC 2017. Water Talk sat down with Tom Perry, National Product Manager with Veolia to discuss Aquavista, one of the more established technologies for capturing critical data, storing it in the cloud and allowing it to be accessed real time, 24/7 from any smart, web-enabled device.  Continue Reading...

Converting Wastewater Treatment Facilities Into Botanical Gardens Municipal wastewater treatment has traditionally taken place as far away from the populace as possible. But as people flock to cities and encroach ever closer on these facilities, the practice of extending ever further out becomes impractical and expensive. And as water becomes scarcer, cities the world over are looking at recycling wastewater from their citizenry closer to home.  Continue Reading...