Request Expert

Expert understands the chemical processes and had practical experience in the use of activated carbon in water and wastewater treatment to remove organic contaminants and chlorine. She has audited existing applications for conformance to industry standards for contaminant removal and specified the size and quality of media for various applications and identified appropriate cleaning and regeneration methods for spent media.

Expert understands the biological and chemical principles involved in aerobic and anaerobic bacteria metabolic processes and has audited and optimized industrial wastewater digesters in industrial and municipal facilities. Her engineering evaluations of system design and performance include the use of operating measures such as F/M (food to micro-organism or food to mass ratio), BOD (biochemical oxygen demand), COD (chemical oxygen demand), TSS (total suspended solids), SVI (sludge volume index), throughput capacity and basic effluent water quality measures such as temperature and pH.

Expert has conducted technical feasibility studies for process design of new systems and audited the performance of existing aqueous filtration systems for conformance to OEM (original equipment manufacturer) operating specifications and industry standards. She has diagnosed and prescribed corrective action for poorly performing filtration systems in industrial, commercial, and laboratory facilities.

Expert has extensive technical knowledge of water chemistry and equipment in boiler feedwater and boiler water systems, including deaerators, feedwater heaters and economizers. She has designed and audited boiler feedwater chemical treatment and monitoring programs for conformance to industry standards such as ASME, ABMA, and EPRI guidelines. She has diagnosed and prescribed corrective action for non-conforming systems, including the use of metallurgical analysis to diagnose the root cause of failure. She has used a variety of laboratory and on-line instrumentation to evaluate boiler feedwater quality, including pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, cation conductivity and total hardness. She has conducted waterside inspections and provided engineering services for boilers ranging from 10 psig to 3000 psig (super-critical) in commercial and industrial facilities such as refineries, chemical plants, paper mills, power plants, pharmaceutical plants, ammonia plants, corn milling operations, and sugar refineries.

Expert understands the current commercialized technical processes to generate chlorine dioxide for small- and large-scale water treatment applications. She has audited applications of chlorine dioxide and understands the specialized process to measure the free and total chlorine concentrations. She has conducted technical and financial feasibility studies for applications, comparing alternative disinfection chemicals and equipment to several chlorine dioxide technologies.

Expert has a strong knowledge of wastewater treatment process design and operation, including closed cycling wastewater treatment, also known as in the U.S. as "zero discharge." She has design and operational technical knowledge about unit operations for closed cycling wastewater treatment, including clarifiers, coagulation, filtration, filter presses, concentrators, flash evaporators, sludge dewatering, and thermal oxidizers.

Expert has specific technical knowledge about the chemistry of coagulants and coagulation processes in industrial and municipal processes for water treatment. She has audited clarifier operations for influent and wastewater treatment, diagnosed problems, and prescribed corrective actions. Her audits include an evaluation of water quality, chemical feed and control, water quality monitoring, mechanical equipment operation, system reliability, and conformance to operating specifications.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of condensate water treatment technologies, including chemicals such as neutralizing amines, filming amines, and oxygen scavengers as well as mechanical treatment technologies such as ion exchange, steam stripping, and carbon and magnetic filtration. She has extensive experience designing condensate treatment programs, having worked as an internal consulting in a major U.S. water treatment company. She has experience formulating condensate treatment products. She has audited condensate systems in a wide variety of industrial and commercial facilities, including refineries, chemical plants, paper mills, tire plants, automotive plants, breweries, corn milling operations, power plants, pharmaceutical plants, sugar refineries, ammonia plants, warehouses and office buildings. During her audits, she created a map of the condensate return system, sampled the water quality, evaluated system conformance to industry standards for corrosion and water quality for return to the boilers and prescribed corrective action.

Expert has conducted conceptual technical and economic feasibility studies to identify the performance, capital and operating costs for continuous counter-current ion exchange systems as compared to conventional batch processes such as downflow ion exchange units and packed bed technology as well as other continuous processes such as the Eco-Tec technology. She has specific technical knowledge about ion exchange processes, ion exchange resin chemistry and manufacturing processes as well as applications engineering knowledge about ion exchange or demineralizer systems in industrial and commercial facilities. She also has experience analyzing resin, auditing existing demineralizer systems of every technology, identifying non-conformances to operating specifications, and prescribing and implementing corrective action. She has experience with system reliability issues such as multi-port valves as well as laboratory and on-line monitoring equipment such as pH, conductivity, silica, and hardness.

Expert has extensive knowledge of cooling water treatment for open and closed systems in industrial and commercial facilities, including refineries, chemical plants, ammonia plants, tire plants, paper mills, corn milling operations, sugar refineries, pharmaceutical plants, power plants automotive plants, breweries, warehouses and office buildings. She has designed chemical treatment programs for cooling water systems, including corrosion inhibitors, dispersants and oxidizing and non-oxidizing microbiological control agents. She has evaluated the efficacy of cooling water treatment programs in industrial and commercial facilities, identified non-conformances and prescribed corrective action. She has used a variety of monitoring tools to audit cooling water treatment programs, including corrosion coupons, continuous corrosion meters or corraters, on-line oxidation-reduction potential meters, or ORP and laboratory and on-line pH and conductivity meters. She has conducted numerous carbon steel and admiralty heat exchanger failure analyses in industrial facilities.

Expert has specific technical knowledge about dissolved air flotation (DAF) processes and commercialized process units, and dissolved nitrogen flotation (DNF). Wastewater treatment plants use these units to remove oil from water. She has audited DAF and DNF units for operational conformance to industry standards and prescribed corrective action to optimize system performance.

Expert has specific technical knowledge about the production and quality of distilled water in commercial and industrial processes, including ion exchange and steam and vacuum distillation processes. She has extensive experience monitoring distilled water quality, and troubleshooting and optimizing the manufacturing processes.

Expert has extensive technical knowledge and applications engineering experience in all aspects of wastewater treatment, including effluent treatment. She notes that effluent treatment can include API separators, dissolved air flotation (DAF) or dissolved nitrogen flotation (DNF), aeration basins, bio-reactors or biological digesters, clarifiers, filtration, carbon filtration, sludge dewatering, thermal oxidation, steam stripping, chlorination, pH adjustment and UV (ultraviolet light) treatment. She has audited wastewater treatment operations for conformance to industry standards, evaluated the margin of safety with respect to the wastewater discharge permit limits for specific contaminants such as phosphate, total suspended solids, pH, and color, and prescribed corrective actions.

Expert has specific technical knowledge about the chemistry of flocculating agents, flocculants, and flocculation processes in industrial and municipal processes for water treatment. She has audited clarifier operations for influent and wastewater treatment and dewatering operations for wastewater sludge, diagnosed problems, and prescribed corrective actions. Her audits include an evaluation of water quality, chemical feed and control, water quality monitoring, mechanical equipment operation, system reliability, and conformance to operating specifications.

Expert has extensive technical knowledge in all facets of industrial water treatment, including potable water purification, influent clarification, filtration, softening, sodium zeolite softeners, demineralizers, ion exchange processes, deaeration or deoxygenation, boiler feedwater and boiler water treatment, condensate treatment, cooling water systems and cooling towers, closed cooling systems, chillers, evaporators, condensers and wastewater systems including API separators, dissolved air flotation units (DAF), dissolved nitrogen flotation (DNF), clarifiers, thermal oxidation units, bio-reactors or biological treatment, filtration, and chlorination. She has experience designing water treatment chemical programs, including oxygen scavengers, corrosion inhibitors, deposit control agents, dispersants, and microbiological control agents. She has audited unit operations for all phases of water treatment including influent clarifiers, filters, demineralizers, softeners, deaerators, feedwater heaters, boilers, turbine condensers, condensate receivers, cooling towers, heat exchangers, and waste treatment unit operations. She has conducted site audits for a wide variety of industrial and commercial facilities including refineries, chemical plants, ammonia plants, tire plants, paper mills, corn milling operations, sugar refineries, pharmaceutical plants, power plants automotive plants, breweries, warehouses, and office buildings.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of the chemical processes and commercialized technology for iron removal in industrial and commercial applications. She is knowledgeable about the chemistry of iron and the solubility of the various oxidation states of iron. She has conducted conceptual design studies, performed economic analyses and conducted audits of existing iron removal systems such as manganese greensand units, aeration processes, and ion exchange process as well as chemical treatments such as oxidation by chlorine compounds or ozone.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of membrane separation, including the chemical and physical principles of the process. She has completed conceptual design and audited applications of membrane separations for conformance to manufacturers’ specifications and industry standards.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of microfiltration and ultrafiltration and has completed conceptual designs for industrial applications.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of organic water treatment chemicals and their application in commercial and industrial applications. She has conducted technical assessments of alternative water treatment chemicals to minimize environmental impact, maximize operator safety and conform to emerging trends of "green technology" and more stringent wastewater discharge permit limits.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of reverse osmosis (RO) and engineering applications knowledge of reverse osmosis water treatment technology. She has audited RO systems in industrial and laboratory facilities for conformance to industry standards and prescribed corrective action. She has designed cleaning procedures, specified cleaning chemical formulation, and conducted RO cleaning procedures on systems used for boiler feedwater and wastewater purification.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of the unit operations and purifications processes for wastewater recycling, also known as water reuse. She has audited industrial and commercial facilities for water conservation and water reuse and created a plan to recycle wastewater, documenting the estimated capital expense to modify the system, and calculating the estimated return on investment and payback period.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of the processes to conduct water desalination, including steam and vacuum distillation and reverse osmosis (RO). Her chemical engineering education allows her to understand the thermodynamics of the distillation process and the chemical and physical principles of reverse osmosis. She has conducted conceptual process design for desalination processes and audited steam distillation units and RO units, identifying non-conformances to manufacturer's specifications and prescribing corrective action.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of water magnetic treatment. She published a Expert-reviewed technical paper in 2002 describing the engineering principles claimed by magnetic water treatment device manufacturers and listing the suppliers of the technology. The paper also reviewed the scientific literature that described the mechanism of action. The paper compared magnetic water treatment to other non-chemical water treatment devices such as electrostatic and electro-magnetic with respect to the claimed mechanism of action and the validity of the scientific research supporting these hypotheses.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of all facets of water purification including filtration (media, ultrafiltration, microfiltration, nanofiltration, greensand, activated carbon, multi-media), clarification (polymer, cold lime softening, hot lime softening), ion exchange (sodium zeolite softening, demineralization), adsorption (carbon), and reverse osmosis (RO). She has audited existing water purification equipment for conformance to manufacturer's operating and effluent quality specifications and prescribing corrective action.

Expert has extensive knowledge of water softening processes, also known as sodium zeolite ion exchange. She has audited softening processes in a wide variety of commercial and industrial facilities for conformance to industry standards and prescribing corrective action to optimize system performance.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of weak and strong cation and anion exchange resin characteristics and specifications. She has completed conceptual process design of ion exchange units and audited existing systems for compliance to manufacturer's operating specifications and effluent quality, identifying non-conformances, and specifying and implementing corrective action.

Expert has extensive knowledge of the water and steam side operation of boilers of a variety of configurations, including hot water boilers, steam boilers, firetube boilers, water tube boilers and "O," "D," and "A" type. She has inspected the waterside of a variety of boilers, conducted failure analysis, monitored boiler water and steam quality, and designed chemical treatment programs for control of deposition and corrosion in the water and steam circuits.

Expert has specific experience in boiler chemical cleaning programs, including specification of the proper cleaning protocol, design of the cleaning procedure, monitoring of the cleaning process, and criteria for success of the process. She also has specific technical knowledge of the formulations and efficacy for cleaning chemicals.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of hollow fiber technology, which is often compared to ion exchange processes. She notes that hollow fiber technology is not similar to ion exchange technology.

Expert has specific technical knowledge of the mechanical and chemical treatment for sludge dewatering.

Identified the two different root causes of two successive heat exchanger failures and prescribed corrective action to prevent future failures. She conducted a one-day on-site visit and delivered a report in three weeks. The consulting metallurgist concurred with her conclusions. Conducted a water utility audit of a 220K bpd refinery and identified numerous hidden liabilities that could have resulted in catastrophic failure of the water-related utility equipment (boilers and heat exchangers).Conducted an audit of a potable drinking water distribution system and identified the root cause of the odor, the risk of equipment failure, and impact on personnel health and safety. She prescribed corrective action and monitored the implementation. Conducted a technology and economic feasibility study for various water purification options and assisted with conceptual design, supplier selection, and acceptance testing upon equipment commissioning. Designed an efficient process to purchase water treatment chemicals and services by specification, wrote the specification, and assisted with supplier selections for a client with over 180 sites.