Still Only Specifying the Big Three MF/UF OEMs - Ignorant or Irresponsible?

By now any engineers that claim they do not know about OEMs offering credible MF/UF systems other than the Big Three (Pall, Siemens and GE) are either ignorant; in that they are not aware that many of the new skid mounted installations over the past few years have used either Toray or Dow UF modules in systems built by OEMs other than the Big Three; or they are too lazy to revise their 5-10 year old boiler plate specs (I say that is irresponsible as it is the consultant’s responsibility when engaged by a municipality to select the most technically and economically feasible solution to meet their needs). A year ago I would have cut the engineers some slack where the first municipal systems using Toray and Dow UF modules had only been operating for about 12 months and there had not been a lot of data presented on these systems. But now after another year with more and more presentations at trade shows and publicity about these systems, for an engineer to claim they didn’t know there was an alternative to the Big Three or they didn’t know enough about the alternatives to include them in a spec, is just downright lazy and this engineer does not deserve to be hired by a small system.

To further my point, at the AMTA/AWWA Annual MembraneTechnology Conference a few weeks ago (Feb 25-28), our booth was approached by three engineering firms, two of which were national firms, about real projects where they are looking at building UF systems with interchangeable UF modules, and obviously the Big Three would not be interested in building these. Any engineer at this show with any membrane experience could not have missed the buzz about a shift to systems that can use different UF modules. I will write a separate post specifically on this topic shortly.

I will accept if an engineer and his client says they did look at the alternatives but their selection criteria required installations with say 5-years' of operational experience, particularly for large systems where the newer UF modules have not yet been in service for long enough. I would however suggest these engineers talk to some of the users of the Big Three MF/UF systems with over 5 years’ experience and ask if they are happy with their systems – I am sure many will not be happy – and then I would question why these OEMs are qualified ahead of other OEMs that may not have had installations operating for as long, but have had only one or two membrane fiber breakages over a 2-year period (many have had none). I bet if you picked any 2-year period for at least two of the Big Three OEMs’ systems operating for 5-10 years, the performance of these systems in terms of membrane integrity would not come close to the first 2-years’ performance of the systems using Toray and Dow membranes.

I’m sorry about this rant but I just spoke to an engineer at who’s firm I had presented a brown bag 2-years ago on our Toray UF installations, and where I had also spoken to other engineers at his firm in the past 12 months about our systems, and then he says sorry he did not know enough about our UF system in time for a spec he just wrote for a ~1MGD installation in which he just specified the Big Three. I hadn’t made contact with this specific engineer but for this firm to be not willing to consider any other OEMs for this small system is just plain ignorance and will probably end up costing a small City at least $200K. I am sure that is not the outcome this City wanted when it hired this engineering firm….