Taking the Easy Road and Wasting Ratepayers' Money

Just when I thought the Big Three mindset in the MF/UF market was finally dead I see a Statement of Qualifications Request that gets my blood boiling….

 This SOQ request for MF/UF suppliers for a drinking water system less than 10 MGD has a minimum qualification requirement of 200 MGD of installed capacity of pressurized municipal membrane systems. Give me a break! If this engineer just wants to install a Pall system, why not sole source them and stop wasting everyone’s time…. How would any other company qualify? Is the engineer trying to create a façade that he is providing a competitive bidding situation for the client to get good pricing? I don’t know how he can do that if he only gets one bidder….

If the owner really only wants a Pall system why can’t they sole source them? The premium they will pay from sole sourcing is probably less than the engineering costs to run through the SOQ process, then conduct some pilots if there is more than one qualified (which can only happen if they don’t stick to the minimum requirements), then have a bidding process between those who piloted, then pick Pall anyway. Or is it the engineer who feels safe using a Pall system due to its track record and from having worked with Pall on projects in the past – and don’t get me wrong, Pall’s MF systems have a great record and looked really good against GE/Zenon and Siemens/Evoqua several years ago when they had all their membrane integrity issues.

Granted this is a small engineering firm who may not have a lot of membrane experience and feels safer working with a company like Pall, but the specific engineer in question previously worked with a large national firm and should know better… The SOQ is all about membrane integrity which suggests to me somebody is stuck in the pre-2010 years when Pall was the only show in town without integrity issues.

This engineer owes it to his client, to keep up with the times and realize that there are new membranes on the market with over 6-7 years of continuous operating data showing minimal membrane fiber breakages, to ensure his client makes the best use of its ratepayers’ money. Do some homework before putting out such a farcical SOQ and see if there are alternative OEMs to Pall in the past 7 years that have good performing MF/UF systems and provide some more realistic qualification requirements to allow a competitive bid for the client. That is the least I would expect of a consultant that is getting paid good money to help a City put its ratepayers' heard earned money to the best use.

OEMs are not sitting around waiting for your bid.....

They can't bid everything!



 

An engineer recently expressed to me his disappointment that after working on a bid specification for over a year and involving a number of OEMs in reviewing the specifications, when it finally came out to bid he had only 2 bidders. I feel for the engineer who put a lot of work into the specification and felt shunned by some of the OEMs. But on the other hand, engineers and owners have to realize that equipment manufacturers are working on many other projects and sometimes have to be selective on where they allocate their limited engineering resources, especially if several projects are bidding at once.

Here are a number of reasons why an OEM may not choose to bid a project even though the project seems like a good fit:

Timing: If there is a flood of bids due at the same time, an OEM may not have engineering resources available to chase all of these and has to pick and choose which projects it has the best chance of winning and/or are potentially the most profitable. Also, if the project has a tight submittal and delivery schedule that overlaps an already busy production schedule, the OEM may have to pass on the project to minimize the risk of liquidated damages and chase projects that better fit into the engineering and factory schedule.

Bid Requirements: So the engineering firm has spent 12 months in pulling the specifications together, then gives the OEMs 4 weeks or less to review a 1000 page specification, do a detailed cost estimate, provide P&IDs, General Arrangement drawings, Layout drawings and I even saw a spec recently where bids had to provide electrical drawings! You get the impression the engineers think the OEMs are just sitting waiting for the bid to come out with nothing else to do…. I had three projects due within 2 weeks this spring where we were required to provide this much information with our proposal. Typically the same firms are invited to bid these projects so they all have the same work load and therefore they are all going to pick and choose what to bid. In some cases, if one proposal requires a lot more work, that one may end up having the least bidders.

Too Much Competition: One thing that really pisses me off is when I help an engineer pull together a specification, estimate electrical loads, prepare drawings to help him with building sizing etc, do iterations on all of this, then the final bid spec comes out and he has listed every possible competitor, including some known to provide inferior, low cost equipment… So you gained no benefit from helping the engineer and to win the project you will have to be at a low margin with no way to recoup the significant engineering work already provided. This is not always what happens and there are many cases where your assistance is rewarded by a specification that somehow gives you an advantage in the bidding process.

Commercial Terms: OEMs all have different levels of risk tolerance, financial resources, insurance coverage, etc. Bigger public firms have deeper pockets and wider insurance coverage and more readily accessible financial data but also have large teams of lawyers which will not budge on some T&Cs. Larger bureaucratic firms may also not be able to meet tight schedules. Smaller firms and private firms may not be willing to share financial data and not be able to do every project that is bidding due to more limited resources but they can be a lot more flexible on T&Cs and if work load is light, can deliver on tighter schedules.

How do you ensure a competitive bid?
In summary, engineers and owners have to realize that there are many other projects bidding and OEMs do not have unlimited engineering resources to bid everything that hits the street as well as do submittals and build equipment they already have orders for. As an OEM, you are better to focus on a few bids and do them well and win some of them rather than try bid everything and win nothing…

So how do engineers ensure they get as many good quality bids as possible? First of all, I suggest giving advanced notice (say a month) when a bid will be advertised so the OEM can perhaps get a head start on some of the proposal requirements and costing based on draft specs they have reviewed. During the spec review process, I would also not only show the equipment specs, but get feedback on the commercial terms and information required to be submitted with the bid. Often this information is not shared prior to the bid, but it can help flush out concerns of OEMs that may prevent them from bidding so these can either be addressed, or you accept you won’t have as many bidders in advance.

Many times when I have asked for an extension of the bid date the engineer has said it is not possible due the tight schedule to deliver the project. It seems stupid to me that the engineer spent so much time agonizing over every detail of the specs for a year, often in a vacuum, and then gives the OEMs a fixed 3-4 week schedule to bid with no flexibility – it would make a lot more sense to leave some slack in the bid schedule to give OEMs more time if needed and ensure more bids and better quality bids!

2017 AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference Wrap

No major highlights but still worth attending

It was mentioned to me at the Membrane Technology Conference in Long Beach last month that I should write shorter posts, but do them more frequently, so I am going to give that a try. One thing that stood out to me at this year’s MTC is that nothing really stood out… The attendance was good, the number of exhibitors was typical and the technical program was very interesting but nothing jumped out at me as an exciting new development or trend.

There were certainly a lot of presentations on the use of membranes in wastewater reuse applications, particularly in California where the drought has driven the need for alternative water sources and in the past few years this has probably been the biggest growth areas for membranes. But with a lot of recent rain in California, will the reuse projects start to dry up? Along the same lines, there was interesting discussion on getting pathogen log removal credits for MBRs which could simplify the treatment trains required for direct potable reuse – see my post from the 2016 WateReuse Symposium for more details on this topic.

I didn’t get much time to walk the exhibit hall floor but I didn’t see any new players in the market and nothing caught my eye as being ground breaking. A few companies who have exhibited in previous years just chose to just walk the floor this year. Lanxess looks to be making a bigger push into the membrane market with the largest booth this year and IDE had a lot of exposure as the major sponsor as they look to become a major player in the US reuse and desalination market.

Not that I thought the show was not worth attending. Quite the opposite. With a lot of big projects bidding or about to bid and the owners and engineers for these projects attending and some presenting, there was a lot of valuable information to be gleaned and business to be done.  I think the venue this year wasn’t as conducive to after show networking as other years with delegates split between a number of hotels. But if you work in the membrane field it was still a show you could not afford to miss.

Has Adoption of Forward Osmosis Stalled?

Lack of Significant Progress the Past 6 Years



After seeing several papers presented at the WateReuse Symposium in Dallas in 2008, I was intrigued with the potential for forward osmosis in water and wastewater treatment with a lot of research completed on these applications and a lot of promising research underway (see 2010 post). I did wonder though if FO would be more of a niche technology due to process limitations such as the complexities of recovering water from saline and organic draw solutions. My prediction in 2010 that FO would be a niche technology appears to be spot on so far. While Oasys Water, one of the FO pioneers, has found some applications for produced water treatment in the O&G market, I am not aware of any adoption of FO in the municipal market.

 
I scanned the proceedings from the AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference the past several years to see if there were any trends in papers presented on FO – this conference has a good mix of research and full-scale case studies and I think is a good barometer of what is upcoming in the membrane industry and what is being commercialized. The reducing and flattening number of FO presentations suggests interest in this technology for mainstream water treatment is waning, perhaps due to some of the technological barriers preventing commercialization. Also, in contrast to the several presentations I saw at the 2008 WaterReuse Symposium, at the 2016 Symposium I did not see any FO papers on the proceedings.

I did a quick scan of the program for the upcoming 2017 AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conference and found three platform papers and one poster on FO but for very niche applications and all presented by universities – so nothing to demonstrate that the technology is moving towards mainstream commercial implementation.


Forward Osmosis Papers & Posters at AWWA/AMTA Membrane Technology Conferences

 This trend in papers presented is in contrast to an article published in ‘World Water: Water Reuse & Desalination’s Autumn 2015 issue titled “Will forward osmosis always be a niche market” (O’Callaghan and Pearce). This article, based on a BlueTech Research Insight report, showed how there had been an uptick in the number of research papers published and patents registered from 2011 to 2013, suggesting increasing interest in building IP positions in the technology. A graph showing the number of published research papers from 2011 to 2014 did show a steady increase to 2013 but there was a slight drop to 2014 and I would not be surprised that this drop has continued to 2016 based on the US conferences I have looked at. The article does say that despite the research interest there are technical hurdles such as membrane fouling that have prevented the technology making any mainstream commercial impact and limited FO to some niche applications. It also makes a good point that the players in the FO market have been venture backed smaller companies, while the larger establish players in the membrane market have been watching from the sidelines.

The lower energy costs of FO compared to RO are certainly enticing although since 2008, significantly lower energy and oil costs may have reduced the attractiveness of this benefit, keeping the big players out of the FO market. One big change since 2008 is that the public is a lot more accepting of potable reuse following severe droughts in Texas and California. That could make the application of FO at combined seawater desalination/wastewater outfalls to reduce the energy costs of desalination, as described in my 2010 post, a lot more feasible. We will probably still need to see energy costs escalate again to get some serious interest from the larger players to invest in FO, sort out the technical issues and finally bring it to large scale commercialization. It will be interesting to see where FO is at in another six years!

2016 WateReuse Symposium: Big Focus on Obtaining Pathogen Log Removal Credits for MBRs

Possible Threat to Microfiltration/Ultrafiltration in Reuse Applications

One of the most interesting topics for me at the 2016 WateReuse Symposium in Tampa, September 10-13 was the research into getting pathogen log removal credits for Membrane Bioreactors (MBRs). If granted, this could potentially be a major disruption to the use of Microfiltration/Ultrafiltration in many Advanced Purified Water (APW) projects and a significant boon for the use of MBRs.

In California, for secondary treated wastewater to be approved by the EPA State Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water (DDW) for indirect potable reuse, subsequent treatment must achieve 10 log removals of cryptosporidium and giardia using treatment processes with pre-approved log removal credits. Currently, MBRs do not receive any log removal credits for pathogen removal and even though the MF/UF filtered effluent from MBRs is suitable for feeding a Reverse Osmosis system, if the objective is to produce APW for direct or indirect potable reuse, a separate MF/UF treatment step is required to obtain the necessary log removal credits. A typical APW treatment train using membranes therefore must include MF/UF [4 credits], RO [1-2 credits] and Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOP) [6 credits] providing 11-12 log removal credits for crypto and giardia. While the membranes used in MBRs will certainly provide removal of pathogens, the lack of an approved on-site test method to quantify the removal is preventing this process from obtaining removal credits from the regulatory authorities.

 
Presentations from Erdal (1) and Salveson (2) described studies that showed MBRs can provide log removals of protozoa of at least 3 which would be enough to achieve the required 10 log removals for IPR in combination with RO and AOP. These removals were based on actual analyses for pathogens in the influent and effluent of existing MBRs. The problem is coming up with an integrity test to verify the membranes are providing a given log removal. Pressure decay tests used for DITs on potable MF/UF systems do not work for most MBR configurations which are designed for lower operating pressures. Turbidity or particle counts appear to provide the best correlation with log removals but it probably will take some time before the regulatory authorities approve an integrity test method to allow MBRs to get formal log removal credits for pathogens.

With a lot less new surface water drinking water projects these days, APW is probably the biggest market for MF/UF systems, at least in the thirsty Western US. The implications of MBRs obtaining a log removal credit of at least 3.0 are pretty obvious. For APW projects where MBR effluent is the feed water, MF/UF treatment will not be required. For new waste water treatment plants that will also provide APW, MBRs would allow replacement of the secondary clarifiers from a conventional activated sludge (CAS) plant as well as the MF/UF treatment step of the APW process.

For most large APW projects, secondary wastewater is sourced from existing CAS treatment plants, so there is no need for MBRs, and this will still be a big market for MF/UF in the future. In some cases, Tertiary MBRs may be used for nutrient removal on CAS effluent, so in these cases MF/UF would not be needed. Overall though, I don’t think log removal credits for MBRs will significantly reduce the market potential for MF/UF in APW projects due to many of the larger projects treating effluent from existing CAS WWTPs, but for projects  where additional biological treatment is required, which will typically be smaller projects, MF/UF will not be required.

1. Erdal, U; “Can MBR Replace MF/UF in a Potable Reuse Train – Implementation Concerns?”; 31^st Annual WateReuse Symposium, Tampa, FL, September 10-13, 2017.
2. Salveson, A; Fontaine, N; “Resolving the Final Hurdles to MBRs for Potable Water Reuse”, 31^st Annual WateReuse Symposium, Tampa, FL, September 10-13, 2017.

 

Still Confusion between Proprietary and Non-Proprietary MF/UF Systems

Are the proprietary system suppliers fuelling this fire?



 I recently attended a conference and saw a presentation from an operator of a proprietary microfiltration (MF) system who was discussing the pros and cons of proprietary and non-proprietary MF/UF systems. This presentation, which was prepared by his consultant, was totally off track and only associating non-proprietary systems with Universal/Open Platform systems. It is a disturbing trend I have seen recently where some engineers and end users believe they have two options now when considering a MF/UF System; A proprietary system where they are locked in to the OEM’s exclusive membrane (such as Pall, GE or Evoqua), or a non-proprietary system that is designed to use membranes from a number of non-exclusive membrane module suppliers (aka Universal/Open Platform/Flexible MF/UF Systems). To simplify this discussion, I am going to group all these definitions as ‘Flexible’ systems which is probably the most accurate description of a MF/UF system that can accept more than one type of module.

This perception is partly correct in that the Flexible systems are certainly provided by OEMs who do not have an exclusive arrangement with a particular membrane module manufacturer (otherwise how could they supply a Flexible system?). But, a non-proprietary system does not have to be a Flexible system. The OEMs who are offering Flexible systems (such as Wigen Water Technologies and H2O Innovation, etc.) all started out building UF systems designed specifically for membrane modules supplied by Toray, Dow, Inge, etc. These OEMs have built many more of these non-proprietary, module specific MF/UF systems than Flexible systems and still can do so if that is the customer’s preference.

Ship has Sailed for Flexible System Deniers

While the entrenched Big Three proprietary MF/UF system suppliers originally tried to fend off the acceptance of Flexible systems, that ship has sailed, with many flexible systems now being specified and built. I believe the new strategy of the proprietary MF/UF system suppliers is trying to divide the market into two options; proprietary systems and non-proprietary Universal/Open Platform systems. Then they just have to convince the customer against a Flexible system, arguing they are more complex, more expensive and larger footprint (which is baloney by the way) so that the competition from the non-proprietary OEMs goes away. That is certainly the impression I got from that recent misguided presentation and a few other discussions with engineers I have had.

Fairly Comparing the MF/UF System Options
Let me debunk the myth that Flexible systems are more expensive and have a larger footprint than proprietary systems. I have seen many bids where the proprietary systems (from all of the Big Three OEMs) have been higher in price with their standard system than OEMs offering flexible systems, so it is BS to say that a Flexible MF/UF system will be more expensive than a proprietary MF/UF system (unless a proprietary supplier tried to build one….). Also, the modules on Pall, GE and Evoqua systems have 30% to 55% less surface area than the modules being used in Flexible systems, so  even allowing for a little extra footprint to accommodate a number of these modules on a Flexible system, the footprint of the proprietary systems is still larger. When a non-proprietary system is designed for a single module, the footprint is even less.

So the takeaway here is if an end user does not see a benefit in a Flexible system, or is not comfortable with the limited operating history of Flexible systems, but wants to minimize footprint and cost, he/she should be considering a non-proprietary system built for a specific module, in conjunction with the proprietary systems – these are not mutually exclusive options! I still see some specs wanting 10 years’ of operating experience of the OEM’s MF/UF equipment. That is currently a good way to eliminate the non-proprietary OEMs where their experience with the modules on the market is only up to about 7-8 years so far (using Toray and Dow). If the customer/engineer wants to be conservative, I believe the real requirement should not only be experience building MF/UF Systems, but also years of experience with the specific MF/UF module being offered – that significantly shortens the years of experience for Evoqua and GE to less than some non-proprietary system suppliers.

This last point is a diversion from my main topic of this post, and I don’t see many specs like this anymore, but I just wanted to make the point that other than Pall with Asahi’s Microza membrane, I don’t think there is a membrane module currently on the market that has been around more than about 7 years and the next longest modules on the market are probably Toray and Dow’s which are used in the non-proprietary systems.

Biofiltration Dominates Discussion at 2016 WateReuse Research Conference

At the recent WateReuse Research Conference in Denver, I had expected much of the discussion to be around the use of membranes (low and high pressure) for wastewater reuse applications, but was surprised that much of the research focus was on biological filtration. Perhaps since there are a lot of full scale membrane systems already installed and in the pipeline for water reuse, this is starting to be considered as a more mature technology and not needing as much research. If that is the reason I think it is mistaken, but I will come back to that later in this post.

I haven’t been keeping up with recent developments in biofiltration, so I was very interested in what was presented at this conference. Around 10-15 years ago when I was working in ion exchange I recall there was interest in looking at biofiltration for nitrate and perchlorate removal from drinking water as an alternative to IX but this treatment generally wasn’t seriously considered for full-scale systems, due to the perhaps misguided concern about using bugs to treat the water when you were also trying to pull them out to protect public health. This did not take into account that many existing filters were probably operating in biological mode to some degree anyway.

Wastewater Reuse Helps Acceptance of Biofiltration

Today the landscape has changed significantly with the current drought on the west coast and the recent drought in Texas helping the public to be more accepting of direct and indirect potable reuse of wastewater and with reuse becoming an essential component of the water supply. If the public will accept potable reuse of biologically treated wastewater, acceptance of biological filtration should be a walk in the park!

Wastewater reuse has also opened up new opportunities for biological filtration, where micropollutants (MPs) not removed in wastewater plants need to be removed if the treated water is to be used for drinking directly or indirectly. In combination with pre-oxidation to break down the MPs to biologically assimable components, biological filtration can be an attractive alternative to high pressure membranes where it has a significantly lower waste volume and does not produce a saline waste, which is a considerable benefit in non-coastal areas where NF/RO waste disposal options are limited and/or expensive.

Wastewaters Ain’t Wastewaters!

There are plenty of technical articles today about potable reuse, so you don’t need to read another one from me. I do think it is important to mention that I believe the use of membranes for wastewater reuse is not yet a mature technology and is worthy of further research. We have all read a lot about Orange County Water District’s Groundwater Replenishment System that has been using membranes for decades for treating wastewater to drinking water standards and maybe some think you can just throw membranes at the end of any secondary wastewater treatment plant and start making high quality recycled water….but wastewaters ain’t wastewaters and membrane treatment is not that simple…. The quality of secondary effluent can vary significantly, from inland WWTPs with stringent nutrient removal requirements to ocean discharge WWTPs with less stringent requirements. This can result in widely varying cleaning requirements which also varies by membrane type. While there have been a lot of pilot studies on different secondary effluent sources, I haven’t yet seen a dedicated study evaluating the impact of specific secondary effluent constituents and the impact on low pressure membrane permeability and cleaning effectiveness.

Perhaps with all of the recent reuse pilot studies, this information will start to come together. Or maybe the key results will be kept from the public as a competitive advantage for those with the pilot experience, which is understandable when OEMs and/or engineering firms have generated this knowledge. This is where no-strings-attached research can help the reuse industry. After being involved in several recent pilot studies my take-away is that wastewaters ain’t wastewaters and don’t assume you can simply take the performance of a membrane at one WWTP and apply it to another.