James's Challenge

A weekly challenge during 2021 to make us all better Industrial Water Treatment professionals, drop by drop. Tune into the Scaling UP! H2O podcast each week to hear the latest challenge. Follow #JC21 and #ScalingUPH2O on LinkedIn.

  • Week 1: Develop your 30-second elevator speech on what you do for a living.

  • Week 2: Check makeup water for phosphate.

  • Week 3: Clean, organize, and update your testing kit and equipment.

  • Week 4: Conduct an elution study on a water softener.

  • Week 5: Send handwritten notes to those who have helped you.

  • Week 6: Update your LinkedIn profile to be a calling card for the customer/prospect versus a resume for your job.

  • Week 7: Draw a process flow diagram complete with feed points, water meters, blowdown, pretreatment, boilers, cooling towers, chillers, etc.

  • Week 8: Leave the customer's lap space cleaner than you found it.

  • Week 9: Test boiler sulfite both immediately on a sample and again an hour later on the same open sample.

  • Week 10: Review all your accounts to ensure you've lived up to all your obligations. If not, develop a plan.

  • Week 11: Explain cycles of concentration to a non-technical person.

  • Week 12: Determine volume of a cooling or closed loop system by calculation or tracer addition.

  • Week 13: Measure pH of DPD free chlorine test after reagent addition.

  • Week 14: Research the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI).

  • Week 15: Check makeup water for ammonia.

  • Week 16: Learn how a chemical dosing pump works.

  • Week 17: Question every chemical product you use at each location to ensure they are the best choice for the application.

  • Week 18: Calculate Holding Time Index (HTI) of a cooling tower.

  • Week 19: Research Ryznar Saturation Index (RSI).

  • Week 20: Convert 300 mg/L Nitrite (as NO2) to Nitrite (as NaNO2).

  • Week 21: Use your sense of touch to determine which softener vessel is online, if chemical is pulsing through feed tubing, etc.

  • Week 22: Explain to a non-technical person how a compression chiller works.

  • Week 23: Research chlorine dioxide.

  • Week 24: Test free chlorine in a cooling tower immediately and again an hour later from the same open sample.

  • Week 25: Dig through the AWT website (www.awt.org) for resources (both members and nonmembers).

  • Week 26: Run a jar study on a wastewater sample (or learn how to do one).

  • Week 27: Use your test kit to test your home's water.

  • Week 28: Learn about breakpoint chlorination and perform a breakpoint chlorination test on a water sample.

  • Week 29: Research neutralizing amine distribution ratio.

  • Week 30: Install or change out corrosion coupons.

  • Week 31: When using the EDTA titration method for total hardness testing, add a couple drops of titrant in prior to the indicator to eliminate other metal interference (but take into account those drops in total drop count or usage).

  • Week 32: Research Practical/Puckorius Scaling Index (PSI).

  • Week 33: Calculate the softening capacity of your water softener(s) based upon incoming water.

  • Week 34: Test for microbiological activity in your cooling systems.

  • Week 35: Find and share parts per million (ppm) analogies (e.g., 1 minute in 2 years).

  • Week 36: Ask a colleague to audit your waster systems.

  • Week 37: Measure the conductivity of water entering and leaving a water softener.

  • Week 38: Explain to a non-technical person how an absorption chiller works.

  • Week 39: Look for deadlegs in your water systems.

  • Week 40: Celebrate Industrial Water Week! You've earned it.

  • Week 41: Test for aerobic bacteria in your drinking water.

  • Week 42: Ask your customer what you can do better.

  • Week 43: Perform a condensate survey throughout a facility.

  • Week 44: Calculate boiler efficiency.

  • Week 45: Using proper safety precautions while sampling, run boiler water tests on a sample collected with a sample cooler and an uncooled sample for the same boiler.

  • Week 46: Perform a dissolved oxygen study on boiler deaerator and feedwater.

  • Week 47: Learn how steam traps operate.

  • Week 48: Test pH of condensate immediately and then an hour later on the same open sample.

  • Week 49: Calculate how much heat energy goes down the drain with boiler blowdown and how much it costs.

  • Week 50: Thoroughly dig through your company's website.

  • Week 51: Make time for your family, friends, and you.

  • Week 52: Question everything and continuously learn.

  • Bonus Week 53: Final challenge is to always be improving…those who plateau will never catch up.