New Developments in the Low Pressure Membrane Market

It has been a while since I have given an update on what is happening in the low pressure membrane market and there have certainly been some interesting developments in the past year. The major topics of interest for me are as follows:

MBRs Replacing MF/UF Systems for Indirect Potable Reuse Applications

While the potable market has been slow for Microfiltration/Ultrafiltration (MF/UF) systems I recent years, water reuse has been a nice new market to fill that void. This market could now dry up with the prospect of Membrane Bioreactors (MBRs) finally getting accepted for cryptosporidium, and giardia log removal credits in water reuse applications. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has announced it will provide 2 log removal credits for crypto and giardia based on challenge test conditions from an Australian study which means a separate MF/UF treatment step prior to RO is not needed to obtain the required 10 log removals for pathogens for indirect potable reuse (IPR). My understanding from a few presentations and discussions with experts in this field at the WateReuse Symposium in Austin this week (Sept 9-12) is to receive the removal credits a very specific set of conditions need to be met based on the Australian study (Tier 1 – I will describe in another post when I get a copy of the proceedings). So, it is not a blanket approval for MBR pretreatment, but I also understand that a number of US studies are underway or planned to demonstrate log removals for a broader range of operating conditions.

While CADPH has not yet formally approved log removals for MBRs, I am aware of at least one project that has been awarded in California this year for a future IPR system with an MBR directly feeding RO treatment and others are in the design phase. This is great for the suppliers of MBR systems but not so great for the MF/UF system suppliers. There is still a market for MF/UF systems in the reuse market for potable reuse from existing conventional wastewater treatment plants where additional biological treatment is not required, but for new wastewater treatment plants looking at IPR, the use of MF/UF systems will be rare in the future. My understanding is that to get enough log removal credits for potable reuse with MBRs used in place of MF/UF treatment (which gets 4 credits), removal credits from groundwater injection are also required, so this treatment train could not be used for direct potable reuse – I will clarify that also when I get the proceedings as I am still coming to grips with this new development.

Nanostone doing a 'Scinor' and chasing retrofits
In an attempt to get some reference installations for its ceramic membrane, Nanostone has been seeking opportunities to retrofit its modules at existing MF/UF installations where the ceramic membranes offer some process benefits over the incumbent polymeric membranes. Unlike Scinor which offers polymeric membranes that are exact replicas of a number of MF/UF modules on the market allowing easy replacement, to install the Nanostone modules, modifications of the piping to and from the modules as well as the supporting frames is required. Therefore, there needs to be some significant performance benefits to justify the modification cost. Nanostone has been successful in finding some installations where cold water and/or highly fouling feed water has reduced capacity and increased chemical costs of existing polymeric membranes, where these factors are not a problem for ceramic membranes. An advantage for Nanostone over other ceramic membranes on the market is the cleaning and backwash regimes that have been developed are similar to the polymeric membranes, so existing infrastructure can be used with minimal modifications. While the membrane surface area is around one third of Toray and Dow modules (258 sqft versus 775 and 829 sqft respectively), the ability to have significantly higher flux rates allows similar productivity per module in some cases. For smaller modules such as Pall/Asahi’s (538 sqft) the Nanostone module can provide higher productivity under the right conditions.

Universal Acceptance of Open Platform Systems

The days of Open Platform/Universal MF/UF systems being considered a novel concept are well and truly over. With several years of good performance for a growing number of installations, Open Platform/Universal systems are entering the mainstream MF/UF market. Of the MF/UF system specs I see now, my guess is around 50% of these now request Open Platform/Universal systems. The larger engineering firms have embraced these systems the most where they are more excepting of references from across the country while smaller regional engineers want to see local references – therefore some states have been slower to catch on. I think some engineers have even taken the concept too far wanting systems to accommodate up to 6 different modules, including a wide range of module sizes, which starts to diminish the advantage of a Universal system when you have to size the MF/UF rack for the smallest module and lose the advantage of a more compact system provided by the larger modules on the market.

But I should not complain and be thankful there is wide recognition now that there are other proven, high-quality MF/UF modules and system integrators available other than the proprietary systems provided by the ‘Big Three’ (Pall, GE/Suez, Evoqua).

ACE18 Wrap - Viva Las Vegas!

Las Vegas turned out to be a great venue for ACE18. Attendance numbers were up and while some skeptics doubted people would actually go to the conference events, exhibit hall traffic seemed busy to me. Unfortunately I had a bid during the show so couldn't go to any papers for the first time in 20 years.... so I can't comment on how well these were attended. I read through the technical program on the flight home to see what I had missed and there were some very interesting sessions on membrane technology and water reuse and overall I think a better balance of technical and management sessions.

One criticism of conferences at Vegas is that delegates disappear down the strip and there are less networking opportunities, but I thought the opposite for ACE18. Because the Mandalay Bay and adjoining Delano Hotel are so big, most functions were held there or at the nearby Luxor, so it was easy to walk from the show to your hotel and back to the functions and even go to a more than one. So for me it was one of the best networking ACE's I have been to. My only criticism of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center was you could not get food in the exhibit hall and lines were very long to get lunch in the Mandalay Bay, so the exhibit Hall was dead during lunchtime when you would hope to get some traffic. That needs to be addressed next time.

I heard a few companies didn't exhibit because they thought attendance would be down due to some city's not being allowed to attend. That may have been the case for some city's but I heard attendance was well up on recent years so it does not seem that too many were restricted from coming. I think it is over 20 years since ACE was at Las Vegas but after the success of ACE18 I am sure it will be a lot sooner before ACE returns. Viva Las Vegas!

2018 Membrane Technology Conference and CA WateReuse Conference Wraps

March was a busy month for conferences so I am combining my summary of the 2018 MTC in West Palm Beach and CA Annual WateReuse Conference in Monterey. There were may of the same West Coast engineers at both shows, which is an indication of the high use of membranes in wastewater recycling projects.

AMTA/AWWA Membrane Technology Conference

Attendance was similar to the past few years at just over 1000 delegates. It felt a little down to me based on exhibit hall traffic, but the quality of delegates was very good as usual, with a lot of interesting membrane projects in the works. The technical program was excellent, and I found myself torn between sessions many times when papers I wanted to see were being presented simultaneously.

There were quite a few sessions on potable reuse including studies directed at proving pathogen removal credits for MBRs and Reverse Osmosis for indirect and direct potable reuse of wastewater and the results look pretty conclusive with regulations to follow in the near future.

In terms on new technology, it looks like Metawater has some real competition now on the ceramic membrane front, with Nanostone recently completing some drinking water plant retrofits in the Dakotas. I think this a pretty good strategy for Nanostone where retrofitting will allow them to get some quick references for their ceramic membrane. The current target for the retrofits is cold water filtration applications where the capacity of systems with polymeric membranes is reduced in winter while the flux reduction for ceramic membranes is significantly less.

There were also a number of presentations on the use of Desalitech’s Closed Circuit Desalination (CCD) process for concentrating brine and improving recovery at wastewater reuse and brackish water applications. It looks like there will be some decent sized CCD systems in municipal applications on the West Cost in the near future.

WateReuse California Annual Conference

This was my first time at this show and I was very impressed with the number of delegates, around 600, which is about half of what is at the national WateReuse Symposium. A large percentage of those attending were water utilities, indicative of all the reuse activity in California. Since this was in Monterey, the Monterey One Water reuse demonstration plant and full-scale reuse system under construction were featured, including a tasting of beer made from the demonstration plant, a frequent and popular event at the WateReuse shows. I must say that Monterey One Water has done an excellent job with their demonstration plant that is set up for tours for all sectors of the community. I believe Pure Water San Diego probably had the first long term demonstration plant followed by Monterey and now many more water utilities are following suit to gain public acceptance of direct and indirect potable reuse.

Monterey One Water Demonstration Plant

I did hear in one presentation that the State of California is about to award pathogen log removal credits for MBRs and in anticipation of this, a number of future reuse projects are already removing UF from the Full Advanced Treatment (FAT) train and feeding RO directly from a MBR. Some of these full-scale projects are currently or about to bid. If you ask me, I am OK with MBRs as a barrier for indirect reuse, but I am not ready for MBRs without a subsequent UF filtration step as a pathogen barrier for direct potable reuse.

The organizers of this conference did a great job in planning every detail, including presentations and entertainment at lunches and breakfast (the WateReuse Family Feud was hilarious!) and I can see why the attendance at this show was so good.

Next major show, ACE18 in Vegas baby!

Why do we Sell Water Treatment Equipment?

When I was hectic bidding several projects the week before Christmas while trying to fit in a few out-of-state sales visits before the end of 2017 and barely finding time to get into the holiday spirit I thought to myself, “Why do we sell water treatment equipment”? I talk to a lot of people in sales in my industry at conferences and it seems like we all have a similar hectic life of travelling every other week, frantically catching up when we are in the office and nearly always in that reactive fire-fighting mode.

I think the only other profession that may travel as much as sales people are professional sportspeople. If we got paid as much as sports stars, maybe that would make the travel more worthwhile. But it isn’t just the travel… If you are selling process technology, you have to put in a lot of work educating the engineers and end users on how the technology works, how to design a process incorporating the technology and then helping to pull together specifications. Then after all of this work that may take place over a few years, the engineer lists all your competitors in the bid spec! Then it is just a race to the bottom to see who will bear the lowest margin….

All the sales consultants will tell you to sell on value provided and not the equipment price, but they should look at selling into the municipal capital equipment market where the government entity is required to have a number of bidders and select the lowest priced responsive bidder… In some cases you can get a bid evaluated on lifecycle cost and in some cases the engineer you have helped with the design will let you have input on the competitors listed in the specs, which is great, but if you work in the muni-marketplace, most projects don’t go this way, unless you want to be really selective and as a salesperson in this market, if you do that you may not be in a job too long…

So let me be more specific. "Why do we sell process equipment into the municipal water treatment market when we have to be travelling for most of the time, our life is in a continual frantic state and there is no money to be made"?

Here is my attempt to justify why I stay in this profession:        

• There are a lot of great people in the industry, sales reps, engineers, fellow manufacturers and operators who are a pleasure to work with. Some of these people I have known for almost 20 years and consider good friends.
• I started my career as a consultant and didn’t get a lot of satisfaction designing a small part of a project and not seeing the end result. Granted I was only a junior engineer, but I wanted to work for a manufacturer who makes a product that solves a problem. It is very satisfying to me to visit a water treatment plant where my company has provided a treatment system that is helping the end user to meet a water quality objective. At that point the installing contractor is gone and possibly the engineer is done with the project but our equipment is there treating the water for many years to come.
• I have this competitive instinct in me and I do get a rush from bidding and winning projects (and the opposite from losing them) which probably comes from my track days.

Being a Municipal Salesperson is like being an Amateur Athlete...
I ran track for years and I think selling in our industry is a bit like being an amateur athlete. Why do you do it when the financial gain is minimal compared to the effort you put in? As my dad used to say when I was training 2-3 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, “You can’t eat gold medals” (he thought I should put my efforts into playing Australia Rules football or another sport where I could get paid). But if you love running, you get your reward from improving your times, winning a race or two, comradery with fellow athletes (many who are still good friends), getting ranked, making national championships, etc, even if you don’t make it to the highest level and make any money. Over the years I trained with a number of Olympic athletes and got a lot of satisfaction thinking that in some way I helped them achieve their goals.

In sales we are proud of the projects we win, the size of the plants sold, the number of installations using our products, the introduction of a new technology to solve a new problem and we value the friendships made. The personal financial gain (or company’s financial gain for that matter) may not be great, but there is a lot of personal satisfaction from playing a part in the improvement in the infrastructure for a community.

So after all of that rambling, I think I have justified to myself why I have been selling water treatment equipment in the municipal market for over 20 years…heck, if I could be an amateur track athlete for almost 20 years, this is a piece of cake!