Water and Wastewater Blog

Smartphone Apps for Engineers

Don Dunnington — 2011-11-10T15:20:49-05:00

You can find Some really useful new tools for engineers in Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. I found more than a hundred apps in the Apple store designed specifically for engineering calculations. Some are for single industries such as cement, metals, electric power and plastics. You can also find broader apps for engineering disciplines such as civil, electrical and chemical engineering.

Chitra Sethi, Managing Editor at ASME.org, thinks there is a market for a lot more engineering-specific apps. She reports finding five mechanical engineering apps for the iPhone that she recommends.

Considering the hundreds of thousands of free and low-cost apps now on the market, you might expect she would have found more. Certainly the productivity gains, portability and ease-of-use that engineering apps would afford suggest the demand for engineering apps will grow. She cites a TechCrunch report that predicts the mobile app market will be worth $25 billion in 2015.

You can find some apps now that are designed for engineers in the process industries and those who do calculations for applications where dry bulk materials are used. We recently added K-Tron's popular K-Convert unit conversion tool to both the App Store and the Android Market. Designed especially for engineers, K-Convert provides you with the unit conversions common in processes where powders and other bulk materials are employed.

You can download the free K-Convert for your iPhone / iPad here at the App Store , or get K-Convert for Android here. For those who still favor a desktop version, the classic K-Convert for Windows PCs remains available here for download.

You can share your own favorite engineering apps by commenting here. And let us know if there is an engineering app on your wish list that you'd like to see developed.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Report Says Upgrading Storm and Wastewater Systems Could Reduce Pollution and Add 1.9 million Jobs

Don Dunnington — 2011-10-18T08:54:04-05:00

According to a new report, an investment of $188.4 billion in upgrading America's storm and wastewater systems would generate $265.6 billion in economic activity and create close to 1.9 million jobs.

The report was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and produced by Green For All in partnership with American Rivers, the Economic Policy Institute and the Pacific Institute. It says that sewage overflows send 860 billion gallons of untreated sewage into our water systems every year, "enough to fill 1.3 million Olympic size swimming pools or cover the entire state of Pennsylvania with waste one-inch deep."

The report says investment in the infrastructure to handle storm water and wastewater has fallen by one-third since its 1975 peak. It projects job creation estimates for each of the 50 states and the job opportunities that would likely result from its proposed new infrastructure investments.

The authors conclude that now is "the best time in a generation to tackle our water infrastructure." They write that water infrastructure investments now would create jobs at a time when they are most needed. They point out that the cost of financing the capital investment is at historic lows and that the current economic climate would likely result in reduced costs for infrastructure projects.

Water Works: Rebuilding Infrastructure, Creating Jobs, Greening the Environment, is available on the organizations website. You can view an executive summary or download the full 62 page report (PDF).

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

What Apple Can Teach Us about the Future of Business in China

Don Dunnington — 2011-09-29T02:11:28-05:00

On Sunday I walked the length of the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Walkway, about 45 minutes round trip. Near one end of this upscale retail mall I came across a large crowd pressing its way into a huge Apple store.

It looked like the sort of crowd you'd expect the day they release a new iPhone model. The fist floor was filled with long tables set up with iPad, iPhone, and Mac demos. Downstairs was filled with counters where you could consult with technical associates about your Apple purchase.

Judging from the crowd at the store, and the number of iPhones and iPads I see on the street, in restaurants and on the trains, Apple’s growing influence is as big in China as it is in the US.

At the top of today’s business section of the English language China Daily, a headline proclaimed “Chinese manufacturers’ interest in innovation was fanned by Apple products, Shanghai Expo.”

In the story, China Daily’s Cai Jing reports “the popularity of the iPad and other Apple products has awakened Chinese manufacturers’ passion for creativity.” The news story also credits the recent Shanghai 2010 Expo as playing a role in boosting the area’s creative industry. Yang Jeiming, a product designer with his own company, says he constantly hears manufacturing clients tell him, “I want something as chic as an iPad.”

The article reports that Shanghai’s so-called creative industry employed 1.08 million people, mostly design professionals. These creative companies accounted for 10 percent of Shanghai’s GDP in 2010, according to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau.

Advertising and exhibition services achieved the highest growth rate (71.4 percent in 2010), followed by industrial design (25.2 percent). Higher growth is expected for both advertising and industrial design studios as a result of the economic problems in Europe and the US, which has prompted Chinese manufacturers to look to domestic markets to fill in for declining exports.

Wang Yang, a product designer in Shanghai, told the newspaper, “Since the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 2008, an increasing number of domestic manufacturers have asked us to improve the design and function of their product.”

A Drive for Higher Quality in the Domestic Market
Yesterday, I met with William Wu, General Manager of the Colormax equipment manufacturing plant in Wuxi, China. He has also seen an increase in business this year from Chinese manufacturers serving the domestic market. He said Chinese processors are purchasing higher-quality equipment, particularly loss-in-weight feeders, that can help them improve the quality of their end products.

Colormax is a K-Tron company that offers Chinese process industries an affordable combination of Western control technology and locally-produced mechanical components. Wu says China’s manufacturers are attracted to the higher Western standards Colormax follows in the quality of the equipment it makes, the level of service it offers and faster delivery times.

Quality in Food and Pharmaceutical Industries Through Automation
Today I met with William Tang, General Manager and Sales Director for China in K-Tron’s Shanghai office. He told me he is seeing a significant increase in interest from China’s food and pharmaceutical industries. “Quality through material handling automation is their priority,” he said, as they strive to meet higher government standards and win consumer confidence.

Tang said Chinese food and pharmaceutical manufacturers need to upgrade their material handling systems on a number of fronts. “They are replacing manual systems with automated conveying and feeding systems,” he said. “Automated conveying systems lessen the possibility of contamination,” he said, which is “a very important consideration.”

Tang said K-Tron’s gravimetric feeders are helping to upgrade the critical end-quality of Chinese food and pharmaceutical products, and the feeder controls provide validation of what went into the product.

Need to Earn Consumer Confidence Illustrated
The importance for Chinese manufacturers to win domestic consumer confidence was brought home to me in a very personal way when a Chinese friend took me to a nearby pharmacy. I wanted to buy a Chinese herbal remedy for cough and sore throat. I’m taking an antibiotic, but I’m leading workshops over the next three days and want to be sure I don’t lose my voice.

She recommended a bottle of heavy black syrup with 18 different herbs. The most important selling point, she said, is that the medicine is made in Hong Kong, not mainland China.

The remedy, by the way, tasted surprisingly good and seems to be helping. Wouldn’t it be a delicious remedy for the Chinese domestic industry, if with the help of Western feeding and conveying technology like K-Tron’s, China’s consumers start buying Chinese processed foods and medicines with confidence. And they are actually made in China.

Confidence in Water, Too
Another personal encounter with China Daily, this time in Europe, brings the quality issue home to the water and waste water treatment industry in China. In June I was flying from Germany to Italy on a discount German airline. Among the free papers they handed out was the English language, European edition of China Daily.

The China Daily's inside feature was all about the country's efforts to clean up Lake Tai (Tai Hu), one of China's five largest lakes. An important tourist and recreational attraction,it had been poluted by industrial waste and Wuxi's exploding population. The article explored the broad range of efforts being taken to clean the lake up.

According to a recent online China Daily story, the city has spent 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in each of the last three years to improve water quality, and the green algae that covered the lake in 2007 has been brought under control.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Air Products Converts Wastewater Gas to Hydrogen Fuel

Don Dunnington — 2011-08-20T17:30:16-05:00

Air Products began pumping hydrogen generated from a California municipal wastewater treatment plant into fuel cell vehicles this month. In addition to generating hydrogen, the project also creates electricity and heat for the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) in Fountain Valley, CA.

Methane gas from the facility's wastewater treatment holding tanks enters a purification system and then feeds into a fuel cell where it is reformed to hydrogen. This fuel cell produces electricity for use at the OCSD facility. Hydrogen not used by the fuel cell in creating electricity to operate the facility is further purified to vehicle grade for automobile fuel cells. According to Air Products, the process will produce enough hydrogen to fuel 25 to 50 electric vehicles per day, plus generate 250 kilowatts of electricity for the plant.

Hydrogen from renewable sources is required to be in the mix in fueling stations in California. The project received partial funding from the United States Department of Energy and involved the OCSD, Air Products, FuelCell Energy (a fuel cell manufacturer), the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, the California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Air quality is a major issue in this Southern California region, and emissions are heavily regulated. The project seeks do demonstrate how power, heat and a transportation fuel with no emissions can be generated from a renewable source. Other feedstock sources such as agricultural, food, and brewery wastes and landfill gas can also use this technology.

Air Products is a global supplier of hydrogen and has been a leader in developing hydrogen fueling stations with more than 50 patents in hydrogen dispensing technology. Air Products has long served the huge industrial market for hydrogen, where it is used in refining crude oil, in treating metals, and to hydrogenate oils and fats in the food industry. Other important uses are found in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and in the manufacture of semiconductors.

While many see hydrogen as the fuel of the future, it cannot compete economically today with the major hydrocarbon fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. According to the National Energy Education Development Project (www.need.org), hydrogen from electrolysis is ten times more costly than natural gas and three times more costly than gasoline per Btu.

In a two-page white paper on hydrogen (download the PDF here), NEED explains that industry produces most of its hydrogen in a process called steam reforming, where high-temperature steam separates hydrogen from the carbon atoms in methane (CH4). While the NEED paper calls this the most cost effective way to produce hydrogen, it points out the downside is it uses fossil fuels both in the manufacturing process and as the heat source.

Unless, of course, the methane comes from wastewater. Then you've got a whole new equation, which is what Air Products hopes to demonstrate in Fountain Valley.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Could Google's Engineering Ethic Help Move Your Organization Ahead?

Don Dunnington — 2011-07-27T08:31:20-05:00

"If we can't win on quality, we shouldn't win at all" Google's co-founder Larry Page told the company's new brand manager, Douglas Edwards. And quality at Google, Edwards was to learn quickly, rests solely with the brilliant engineers Google was hiring as fast as it could find them.

In his new book, I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, Edwards tells the story of Google's formative years, as it zoomed from an unknown late-comer to the search engine field to the dominator of search, email, advertising and many other online activities. While the book is more than an ode to the glories of brilliant engineering--there are lots of insider stories of human excesses and engineers run-amok--I found myself noting how frequently the Google story centered on its remarkably strong engineering ethic. I found five central characteristics that seem to me to be central to Google's engineering ethic.

While they may seem to apply best to a technology company--especially a startup where everyone sees a chance to become an overnight millionaire--these principles could help any organization that feels stuck in the status quo.

1. Branded by Engineering
Though he was Google's brand manager, Edwards makes no claim to building the Google brand. "The brand was built on product, and the product was built by engineers," Edwards declares from the outset. The product that distinguished Google in seach back then and continues to keep them ahead of the competition today, is Google's PageRank algorithm, which was the first to look at in-bound links to a web page as a measure of the page's relevance to a user's search.

Google started in 1996 as a joint research project by Stanford grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They called their project "Backrub" and changed the name to Google in 1997, based on the mathematical term googol, a very large number (10¹⁰⁰). They moved the operation to a friend's garage and incorporated in September 1998. In 1999 they received $50 million in startup funding from two of Silicon Valley's leading venture capital firms.

2. Efficiency Valued Above All
"Efficiency, I would learn very quickly, is valued highly among those who live to make things better," Edwards observes. It was likely this nearly ruthless dedication to efficiency that made Google so disruptive to so many businesses, undercutting the less-efficient advertising model, for example, that had allowed newspapers and magazine to thrive for a very long time.

"Engineers rebel at inefficiency," Edwards writes. "Larry Page more than anyone I ever met, hated systems that ate hours and produced suboptimal results. His burning passion was to help the world stop wasting his time."

3. The Fast Change Imperative
This drive for quality and efficiency leads Google's engineers to another game-changing characteristic of their business model: fast, frequent small changes to their product that would enhance its value to the user.

"Our engineers made quick data-based decisions and implemented them. If the numbers said changing A to B would improve product X, why not do it now," Edwards asks. He sees this urgent mindset to change things now as the driving force of Google's success. "Engineers knew how to make things better, and every minute, every second we delayed improvements, users had to endure sub-optimal interactions with our site."

4. Build the Team
Urs Hölzle is a brilliant Swiss engineer who heads Google's engineering department. Edwards writes that Hölzle's greatest accomplishment was "building the team that built Google." One of the toughest lessons for many people--especially for those who have been highly effective at their craft, whether it's engineering, or selling or writing ad copy--is to leverage that skill through others. Edwards tells how Hölzle continually urged his staff to extend themselves through others:

"Your greatest impact as an engineer," he would tell them, "comes through hiring someone as good as you or better... because over the next year, they will double your productivity. There's nothing else you can do to double your productivity. Even if you"re a genius, that's extraordinarily unlikely to happen."

5. Grow the Company
Companies must grow to keep faith with their engineering ethic. It's not just about profits and satisfying shareholders. Sure, if you don't show quarter-to-quarter earnings growth, your stock gets hammered. But the Google story suggests another, more basic reason why companies have to grow. If you're not growing, you can't build a team. If you're not growing, you can't continue to innovate and push forward quickly with new improvements to your product. If you're not growing, there is little your engineers can do to build the higher quality that builds a higher brand value.

Google went public on August 19, 2004, and by March 4, 2005, Edwards departed Google, having hit "the startup jackpot." He no longer needed to work for the money, and it seems he no longer saw a role for himself at Google that was worth the struggle. He concludes that impatience remains Google's one big flaw: "impatience with those not quick enough to grasp Google's vision." Now that the company is so big and so dominant in so many areas of the Internet, their impatience is more likely to be perceived as arrogant and even sinister.

Yet Edwards admits that after Google he finds himself more impatient with "the way the world works." He asks:

Why is it so hard to schedule a DVR recording
Why aren't traffic signals timed to optimize rush hour traffic flow
Why does the customer service representative ask for your customer number after you"ve already keyed it in for the robot that answered the your call

"These are all solvable problems," he concludes. 'smart people, motivated to make things better, can do almost anything. I feel lucky to have seen firsthand just how true that is."

- "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edwards is available in hardcover at Amazon.com for $15.62. I downloaded the Kindle version for my iPad for $14.06.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

The Big Thirst: Why We Can't Let Water Remain Invisible in Our Lives

Don Dunnington — 2011-06-13T16:06:08-05:00

Charles Fishman worries about our water ignorance. Water is present everywhere we look; yet we know so little about it.

Our languages are full of water words and metaphors. Our cultures and religions are filled to the brim with water stories and symbols. In the Western world, for the last hundred years nearly all urban (and now rural) residents can turn a tap—even in a desert—and water comes gushing into our glasses, our tubs, our showers and pours out on our lawns and gardens, with no effort by us and at so little cost as to seem free.

A Global Water Tour
Fishman sets out to cure our ignorance in a breathless recitation of water facts and extended tours of water use and misuse from the desert water fountains and golf courses in Las Vegas to a drought-stricken Atlanta, Georgia. From Southern California to New Delhi to Australia, Fishman tells the many stories of today's droughts and floods and the long history of water's impact on societies. Reading Fishman's accounts of how we use and misuse water, we're reminded of how large the distribution and use problems are and how little we seem to be able deal with them, even with disaster staring us in the face.

Fishman points out that while watersheds are very large systems, unlike other global environmental issues, the problems in one water basin do not spill over into another system. So he takes us on a journey through many different systems, and many different sorts of users. We visit IBM's huge water ultra-purification system in Burlington, Vermont, where they need a staggering amount of super-pure water to produce computer chips. We learn how wool washing profoundly impacts the water supply in arid Australia, and how a leading wool processor has devised ways to save prodigious amounts of water and money.

The Ultimate Trivial Pursuit for Water Enthusiasts
If you have an appetite for water factoids, Fishman has a smorgasbord of delights for you:

Water is never destroyed or used up. Today we're drinking the same water the dinosaurs drank. (Is that Tyrannosaurus Rex pee in your glass?)
Water is the lubricant that allows the continents to move
A 150-pound man is 90 pounds water
The average American flushes 18.5 gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet every day
An IBM chip factory in Vermont uses 3.2 million gallons of water a day
In water-short Australia, a single wool processing factory uses 380,000 gallons of water daily
Also in Australia, a farmer pours 6 billion liters of water over 10,450 acres of rice fields
A two-liter bottle of coke takes five liters of water to produce it.
49 percent of water use in the US is for power plants
The electricity you use at home requires 250 gallons of water per person per day
1 ton of steel takes 300 tons of water
At lift-off the space shuttles used one million gallons of water per minute (not to keep it cool but to buffer it against being shaken apart by the noise)
Of the world's 6.9 billion people, 1.1 billion don't have adequate water
5,000 children die every day from lack of water or diseases from tainted drinking water

And it goes on. Many of the more interesting tidbits are about the science of water, some of which remains a mystery to those who study it. When it comes to solutions for the way households, industries and farmers use water, Fishman doesn't offer a prescription. He seems to favor market pricing that would force all water users to be more prudent, and provide an incentive for industries to be more productive in their water use.

We Pay for Essential Things
"Except for air and water," he notes, "…we pay for almost everything else in life that is essential; we entrust everything, from electricity to hospitals, to private companies." But in a bow to the Hollywood view of private companies, Fishman worries a few pages later that "…it's also vital not to let business get so far ahead that we cede the future of water to commercial interests."

Despite his wavering on how far to trust business, Fishman more often than not seems to come down on the same side as the businesses that must devise and produce the technical solutions to maintain our lifeline to water. "Technology is making it easier to solve almost any water problem," he declares. The real problem is getting the people and their political leaders to recognize the problems, and understand and accept the technical solutions (such as getting over the yuck-factor of drinking recycled water).

As Fishman points out early and often in his very readable and informative book, "…running out of water is like slipping off the edge of a cliff—it's hard to be saved." Fishman wants us to save ourselves before it's too late to be rescued.

- The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman is published by Free Press (400 pages). I bought it as a Kindle eBook on Amazon for $12.99.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Asia to Lead Us in Global Economic Super-cycle

Don Dunnington — 2011-04-09T15:36:34-05:00

With all the news of political upheavals, rising energy prices and natural disasters, it can be hard to believe that the recent spate of good economic news can last. Yet in the long run, a strong upward trend in the world economy may be the bigger story.

According to a 150-page study released by Standard Chartered Bank (PDF, 4.78 MB), the world is in "a sustained period of high economic growth, or super-cycle" that started in 2000 and is expected to last for another 20 years or more. Despite two global recessions (2001–2002 and 2008–2009), the report shows global output increased more than 50 percent in the last decade. By 2030 Standard Charter predicts the global economy will reach $300 trillion, up from $62 trillion today.

The report defines a super-cycle as a period of exceptionally high global growth, "lasting a generation or more, driven by increasing trade, high rates of investment, urbanization and technological innovation and characterized by the emergence of large, new economies, first seen in high catch-up growth rates across the emerging world." The report points to two previous super-cycles: from 1870 to 1913 and from the end of the Second World War to the oil crisis of 1973.

This new, 21st century super-cycle is expected to last until at least 2030.It is being propelled by emerging markets such as India, China, Indonesia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. "Hundreds of millions of people are likely to enter the global workforce," the study reports, "driving urbanization, high rates of investment and technological innovation. While earlier super-cycles were driven by the comparatively small populations in the West, the current super-cycle will involve 85 per cent of the world population."

Asia in particular is expected to see sustained and dramatic growth. The study forecasts that living standards, measured by real per capita income, will have increased nine-fold in China and India between 2000 and 2030. "Rising personal incomes will push billions of people into the middle classes and drive consumption which will spur domestic economic growth," according to the study. China is predicted to be the largest global economy by 2030, passing the United States. India is expected to be the third largest economy.

Standard Chartered was formed in 1969 through a merger of the Standard Bank of British South Africa, founded in 1863, and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, founded in 1853. The bank reports that 90 per cent of its income and profits come from operations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The Short Term Economic News
March was indeed a good month for economic news around the world, with capital equipment sales strong across the globe. U.S. government reports for March showed a continued upward trend in the economy and unemployment continued downward, though still high compared to pre-recession levels.

In March the Conveyor Equipment Manufacturers Association (CEMA) reported that 2010 shipments in North America were up 9.6%. CEMA estimates that shipments totaled $6.642 billion for 2010, an increase of $584 million from 2009 shipments of $6.058 billion. New orders were estimated to total $6.85 billion in 2010, up $1.14 billion over 2009, an increase of 19.96%.

Equipment Sales in the Short and Long Term
Economists have long considered industrial equipment sales to be a lagging indicator of the business cycle: the equipment business can remain strong for many months after a recession starts and remain in the dumps long after the larger economy has recovered. When it comes to longer-cycle trends, however, we might expect to see equipment sales to be a leader in sustaining a super-cycle. Certainly we should see a significant increase in demand for water and waste water processing capacity as we progress to a $300 trillion world economy by 2030.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Engineering Students Bring Clean Water to Small Community with 'Local Tech'

Don Dunnington — 2011-03-10T13:55:01-05:00

A team of Rowan University engineering students recently traveled to La Ceiba, El Salvador to install biosand water filter systems. The filters are part of a pilot program that serves ten homes in the small village, with more to come in future visits. The students are members of Rowan University's chapter of Engineers without Borders (EWB), which has some 250 chapters in the U.S., including 180 chapters on university campuses.

This story provides an important lesson beyond how these student-engineers found personal fulfillment in "making the world a better place." There is a larger story of how organizations are now able to focus on small, "local tech" projects as the way to get things done.

EWB-USA currently has more than 350 active projects in 45 developing countries around the world including water, renewable energy, sanitation and construction projects, such as a bridge across a mountain river. Most projects involve water or wastewater treatment. These projects are completed in partnership with local communities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). All chapters work with communities for a minimum of five years:

"EWB-USA's unique grassroots approach requires that all program proposals come directly from the communities themselves. This increases the likelihood of success by ensuring that the needs addressed by our chapters are being identified and driven by the community. Every program begins with an assessment trip where the chapter performs a community needs assessment and works with the community to identify their priorities. During the following years the chapter returns to perform further assessment, implementation, training, and monitoring and evaluation trips. Throughout the program community members receive training on the maintenance and operation of their infrastructure and a financial mechanism is established to ensure long term economic sustainability."

You could think of EWB's approach to these small-scale infrastructure projects as "long tail engineering," following the online marketing pattern Chris Anderson described in an October 2004 Wired Magazine article and later in a book published in 2006. With its ability to share information instantly and at very low cost, the Internet has tipped the value proposition of engineered projects from mass solutions, brought to us via mass production and mass communication.

Now organizations can fund lower cost, local solutions, with easy to produce custom solutions that rely on targeted, very local communication. To get the benefits of economies of scale, mass solutions required large-scale, one-size-fits-all projects.

Today, the Internet makes it possible to share engineering expertise cost-effectively for customized, very small, truly localized projects.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

The 21st Century Arrives on the Internet

Don Dunnington — 2011-01-18T17:16:58-05:00

The calendar says we're ten years into the new century, but so far things haven't felt much different from 1999. That could change soon. There's a good chance 2011 will mark the true beginning of a truly new age.

It took two decades for the 20th century to get up to full steam, and for the "roaring 20s" to launch a new age. Known as the Jazz Age, the twenties set the stage for the technology-driven culmination of what historians call the Modern Age, an era of science and technology that started approximately with Johannes Gutenberg's printing press in 1436 and extended beyond the Postmodern 1950s and 60s, to include the Atomic Age, the Space Age, and the dawn of the Internet Age.

But since we're in the Internet Age, and things happen faster in Internet time, the 21st century's Next Age, whatever we call it, is likely to arrive sooner than expected. Here are just a few of the signs that the Next Age is here:

Moore's Law continues driving computing costs down, and that's driving everything smaller, lighter, faster, smarter and networked. Computers have gone from mainframe to mini to micro/PC to mobile. At Monaco Media Forum, Ericson CEO predicted 50 billion connected devices by 2020 and a truly "networked society." (See MMF 2010 Keynote on YouTube, "Internet 2.0: Mobile changes everything," by Hans Vestberg, President & CEO, Ericsson).

But it's not just people getting connected by the Internet. Where the numbers get really big--and really interesting to those of us in the industrial equipment business--is what has been called the Internet of Things. "The next big revolution that will happen is the Internet of things," Cisco Chief Technology Officer Padma Warrior said at the 2010 CTIA Wireless Trade Show in Las Vegas. She predicted 1 trillion connected devices by 2013.

Networked things in a process include sensors, which can monitor and report process status, actuators, which can trigger an action, and controllers. Actions based on an input from a sensor are turned into a command by a controller. An example from my world of process equipment would be a Smart Force Transducer (made smart by an on-board microprocessor) that sends a digital weight signal to a feeder controller (also dependent on a microprocessor), that controls the speed of a motor (the actuator) that turns the screws of a loss-in-weight feeder.

According to K-Tron CTO Jim Foley, one of the biggest gains yet to be realized by the Network of Things in the process industries will be in terms of feeder system support. "A big trend in industrial networking," Foley said, "has been the near-universal acceptance of Ethernet ." He said all the industrial network protocols are now able to run on top of Ethernet, which is very easy to connect to either within the factory or remotely. This offers the possibility of instant remote diagnostics and troubleshooting.

"We have the tools now," Foley said, "to provide remote support, and the advantages to our customers are obviously huge. The only thing missing is for processors to put in place the safeguards they feel necessary to grant our service people the access."

The Internet Age doesn't simply grow at an astounding pace: It keeps changing and morphing in entirely unpredicted ways. Its impact spreads from how we market and sell our products to how we service our customers. It transforms our society, our children, our employees and our customers.

When social media hit the Internet scene in the last decade, it so changed the landscape we gave it its own name, Web 2.0. Now, smart phones and their apps, followed closely by tablets and e-books, have once again transformed the Internet landscape. Today's Internet is more social than ever, highly search-driven, far more local in language and culture, and is moving far beyond the desktop. What does all this mean to industry?

In an article on CIO.com titled "The Internet of Things and the Cloud CIO of the Future," Bernard Golden, author of the best-selling "Virtualization for Dummies," wrote:

"The simple fact is that everyone — and that includes (perhaps especially includes) those of us in the technology industry — underestimates the growth of ever-cheaper computing devices. To quote one industry luminary, later hoisted on his own petard, Ken Olsen, "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." Olsen now is laughed at for such an attitude, but the fact is, for the reality of the market as he saw it at the time, it was completely appropriate. But he completely missed how the market exploded once the reduced cost of personal computing enabled entire new uses for computers…. Ken Olsen's example indicates that one is better served in keeping one's eyes on the horizon rather than the well-trod ground at one's feet."

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Illustration: Where there's smoke there's fire by Russell Patterson

Why My Holiday Gift List Starts with "i"

Don Dunnington — 2010-12-03T10:48:25-05:00

People have asked me what gifts are on my short list for those wanting the latest in technology. The short answer is anything that starts with "i" as in iPhone and especially iPad. The iPhone set speed records for its rate of adoption, and the iPad is proving to be even more phenomenal.

The business world's road warriors have led the charge. On every flight I take I see an increasing number of iPads as I walk down the aisle towards my seat. Before the flight they're checking last minute email, or getting the latest news. During the flight, they're watching a movie, reviewing a document or working on a presentation. You could do all these things with a notebook computer or a smart phone, but the iPad makes it so much easier and far more fun.

In September I talked with a lady at the Cincinnati airport, one of a half dozen or so using iPads as we waited for our flight. She's a corporate trainer, mostly working with small groups. With the iPad she can leave the PC and projector home, reducing both the weight and complexity of the equipment she must carry. Her company wasn't ready to spring for this new technology; so her husband bought her one for her birthday.

The iPad is one of those unique gifts that fits everyone of every age. I know a physician who is giving iPads to all five of his children, who range in age from 8 to 18. I'm giving one to my wife for Christmas, and I know several other men whose wives are getting the same. On Thanksgiving Day, my four-year-old grandson walked in the door playing "Angry Birds" on his mother's iPad.

It all started with the iPod, and with each new addition to its cool iTools, Apple has created what Seth Godin might call an iTribe. In his classic little book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Godin describes how today's successful organizations have leaders, not managers. Managers are cynics. Leaders have hope and infect their followers with hope. And magic. Every Apple iProduct has been filled with magic. The first time people hold the bright iPad screen in their hands, they say "Wow!"

That's why, like so many others, I put the iPad at the top of my gift giving list this year. It's magic.

How Talent Drives Success for Organizations that Follow "Third Path"

Don Dunnington — 2010-11-07T08:43:37-05:00

John Hagel III had just 10 minutes to tell us how he's found a "third path" to growing an organization's success. Hagel was the Keynote speaker at the awards ceremony for Deloitte's 2010 Greater Philadelphia Fast 50. The 10-minute limit was a self-imposed constraint Hagel placed on himself so the audience could get home in time to see the Philadelphia Phillies play the San Francisco Giants. It turned out to be the last game the Phillies would win this year.

I was at the Deloitte event with Bob Wisniewski who was accepting an award for K-Tron International. For the second year running K-Tron has been named to Deloitte's annual list of the fastest growing technology, life sciences and clean technology companies in the region. Though his presentation was cut short, Hagel's message resonated loudly for those who were present.

While Hagel was adressing a business audience, his insights have broader application; especially to those in the water and waste water industry who must keep up with fast changing environmental and technology challenges. Hagel said it's not development of major new products or services (the first path) that's going to drive success in the future. While innovation remains important and is a good starting point for growth, good ideas are quickly copied and improved upon and don't remain a competitive advantage for long. Major acquisitions (the second path) present their own challenges, and the business landscape is littered with big mergers gone wrong.

The third path is what Hagel calls "leveraged growth," and he's quick to add that doesn't mean financial leverage. It's leveraging your organization's capability to add more value for your customers. The path to more customer value, he says, lies in your organization's talent development. This secret to future growth is at the heart of a major new book Hagel has written with John Seely Brown and Lang Davidson: The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion (link to buy book on Amazon.com).

You can learn more about Hagel's books and his ideas on his website, Edge Perspectives. If you sign up for the authors' newsletter, you can instantly download six e-booklets :

Pursuing Passion
Shaping Serendipity
Talent: The Dilbert Paradox
From Passion to Potential
Three Levels of Pull
Passion versus Obsession

I have not yet read the book but I did download and read the six booklets. In Booklet Three, Talent: The Dilbert Paradox, you can learn more about the authors' view on talent development:

"Putting talent development center stage… forces a reassessment of business strategy, particularly growth strategies. Companies that aren't growing rapidly often fail to provide a rich set of opportunities for their employees to develop. This occurs because slower-growing companies confront fewer new performance requirements and generally offer slower advancement opportunities than faster-growing ones. Slow growth companies are thus at a disadvantage in developing the talent of their employees. Over time, they will likely find it harder to attract and retain world-class talent.

"Consider Google's ability to attract top quality talent from slower growing technology companies. And notice how even Google has more recently been losing its own talent to still-faster growing companies like Facebook….

"At another level, the broad-based shift in many markets from product-based to service-based businesses also informs how well and how fast companies develop talent. Services typically offer the opportunity for richer and quicker market feedback loops and more rapid iterations on the design of customer offers than products do. As a result, companies with a higher percentage of services relative to product businesses will have a talent advantage."

Is your organization taking the "third path" to optimizing your services? Do you work to develop your employees' talent advantage? Are your equipment and systems suppliers adding value through their development and application of talented associates devoted to solving your process problems?

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Water Wars: Too Little Water, Except When There's Too Much

Don Dunnington — 2010-10-31T14:15:47-05:00

In "Water Wars – When Drought, Flood and Greed Collide" documentary writer/director Jim Burroughs takes us to the small country of Bangladesh to witness how flood/drought cycles, together with geopolitical and economic strife, have brought calamity to some of earth's poorest inhabitants.

He also takes us to Holland, New Orleans and California to illustrate what he sees as a global crisis fast approaching as a result of politics, money, and--perhaps worst of all--a lack of vision about just how big and important this issue has become.

Narrated by Martin Sheen, the film opens with Bangladesh's water woes, and after brief excursions to a few other locations, it returns to this main focus. India surrounds the country on three sides, and their dams control the rivers that flow into Bangladesh, releasing too little water when it's dry and too much when they flood. From the south, the Indian Ocean steadily encroaches on the land. Deadly tsunamis and typhoons inflict unpredictable flooding, erosion and death.

According to the CIA's World Factbook, about a third of this extremely poor country floods annually during the monsoon rainy season, hampering economic development. Many people live on and cultivate this flood-prone land, which as with most river deltas has some of the richest soil. These deltas are formed by large rivers flowing from the Himalayas and through India. The Ganges unites with the Jamuna, the main channel of the Brahmaputra, and then joins the Meghna and empties into the Bay of Bengal.

An entry in on Bangladesh in Wikipedia reports "The alluvial soil deposited by these rivers has created some of the most fertile plains in the world. Bangladesh has 57 trans-boundary rivers, making water issues politically complicated to resolve."

The documentary predicts that as Asia's thirst for electric power grows, the number of dams in India will grow. Forty new dams are already planned according to "Water Wars." Thus Bangladesh may suffer even more in the future by the diversion of water for hydroelectric production, to the point where little water reaches them.

Already, during the dry season, rivers run dry before reaching Bangladesh. Then when monsoon rains arrive, India opens its floodgates to prevent flooding upriver in India. Downriver Bangladeshi residents lie unprepared, and homes, farm animals and people are the casualties. Still more casualties arise from pollution from arsenic- contaminated well water. This is the deadly landscape in the "water wars" title, along with warnings that the war seems destined to become global.

Could the Dutch Save Us from a Water War?
In Holland, the Dutch have long lived quite well on coastal lands below sea level, but not always perfectly. We're shown old news footage of a 1953 flood that killed 1800 people when the sea broke through Holland's famous dykes. Since then, they've gotten even better at the technologies and techniques of flood protection.

The film shows Dutch experts with high-volume Dutch pumps lowering the flood waters in a devastated post-Katrina New Orleans. We see Dutch experts visiting vulnerable California areas where they offer advice to avoid flooding and drought cycles. Yet, oddly the time-tested and successful methods the Dutch have to offer receive little attention in the film. There is surprisingly little discussion of exactly how Holland employs technology and organization to protect its seawalls and dikes, of how a small nation can muster the resources and will to do whatever it takes to sustain life, commerce, safety and prosperity in a very vulnerable land.

As the film returns again to the plight of poor Bangladesh, it seems the moral they're driving at here isn't to apply knowledge and engineering and competent management to solve the world's water issues. It's that somehow the "global community" must rise up and outlaw greed.

What If They Declared War and Nobody Came?
But while positioning serious water issues as a war and fingering "greed," meaning economic growth, the villain, the film fails to recognize that Bangladesh is emerging as a country on the way up the economic ladder. In September of this year Bangladesh received a U.N. award for its progress toward achieving its Millennium Development Goals, which seek to eradicate the country's extreme poverty, boost health, promote education and the improve the status of women by 2015. According to the World Bank the country has achieved an average annual growth rate of 5% since 1990. Goldman Sachs included Bangladesh as one of its "Next Eleven," which are the economies most likely to grow in the footsteps of the five fast-developing BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Experience shows that when countries become less poor, their people are far better able to muster the resources needed to solve their problems.

Is water a contentious issue around the globe? You bet. Just ask those in New Jersey and Pennsylvania about how New York City is hoarding water in three gigantic water reservoirs in the upper Delaware watershed. According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer this has been a point of contention between the city and four states for more than half a century, but a new software program, not a war, may finally bring more harmony.

It isn't that New Yorkers got less greedy about their hold on the water that lies upstream. It's that technology, along with continuing pressure from those affected downstream, now offer a solution far short of war. The Dutch didn't conquer the sea with a war: they used the innovation and technology that strong economies with well-functioning governance are able to employ.

This film does a good job of pointing out the harm that can be done when rivers are dammed, or floods aren't prepared for, or clean water isn't cared for. It's too bad the producers felt compelled to use the metaphor of war. Maybe that's what it takes to sell a movie in Hollywood. But that isn't what's going to fix our myriad water problems.

- "Water Wars – When Drought, Flood and Greed Collide" DVD released August 31, 2010; Cinema Libre Studios; writer/director Jim Burroughs. Narrated by Martin Sheen. Price: $19.95

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

A Good Lesson in Authentic Branding from Another Big Oil Company

Don Dunnington — 2010-08-31T20:01:27-05:00

When it comes to authentic branding, perhaps that earlier oil-spill icon, ExxonMobil, can teach BP a lesson. While the news this summer was focused on BP's massive spill, the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy completed its fifth year of what the Wall Street Journal's William McGurn called "summer camp for science teachers."

Teachers from third through fifth grades came to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ to learn how to become better teachers of math and science. About 2,600 teachers have attended the academy since 2005. Golfer Phil Mickelson is more than a celebrity name behind the project. According to McGurn, Mickelson has had a lifelong passion for math and science and even uses his understanding of vectors and probabilities to the advantage of his golf game.

McGurn has this to say about the future value of the academy:

Though there are few metrics about results, some outside research suggests that the training they receive is leading to increased use and frequency of math and science in the classrooms of academy alumni. Mr. Mickelson says it's a 15- to 20-year bet.

"It's hard to teach a subject when you don't feel good about it or lack confidence," [Mickelson] says. "We bring teachers on an all-expenses-paid trip… give them good instructors… treat them like professionals… by getting them excited about teaching science, we'll have more American kids excited about studying math and science."

Though 21 years have passed since the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in Alaska, it is safe to assume that this event is known far more widely than these math and science sessions. But consider the cumulative effect of 2,600 grade school teachers changing the life direction of countless students. Consider the children who have (and will in the future) become excited about math and science because a teacher attended this program. Consider what it means to our communities and our companies when our youth become proficient in math and science, even if they never pursue a career as an engineer or scientist.

The Mickelson academy for grade school teachers is one of eight math and science programs listed on the ExxonMobil website. In terms of public good, which do you think will pay the greater reward? BP's declaration of green energy or ExxonMobil's energizing commitment to making math and science accessible to more children?

I'm guessing technology knowledge is the bigger issue for technology-driven organizations. Whether you're part of a public water utility or one of the companies that make their equipment, if people who don't understand what you do, or how you do it, they can't appreciate the extraordinary efforts you take to make their water safe.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Water and Oil: Beyond Smiley-Face PR

Don Dunnington — 2010-08-10T12:24:10-05:00

Last week I posted An Industrial Branding Lesson from a Tar-Balled Oil Producer at the PowderandBulk.com blog. The article lead off with the popular impression of the environmental disaster BP's oil slick had spawned. The following day the New York Times published this news: U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk.

So was the disaster something less than what we expected from the news and the blogs and the live video we could watch 24/7 as oil spewed into the Gulf for weeks-on-end? And what response should we expect from industry and regulators to protect our waters in the future?

I don't claim to know the answer to either question; though I expect there are many engineers and scientists, managers and policy makers who visit this website who could enlighten us all. And that is the role that our energy and water experts should be playing: careful, thoughtful, calm, reasoned analysis after the crisis has passed. We need more respectful dialog that balances competing needs and offers options that take into account social, economic and environmental imperatives that may not share the same objectives.

Whatever the level of long term damage to the Gulf waters, there will be continuing damage to the public perception of the industries that build and sustain our modern world. And that was the point of the Industrial Branding article: those who engineer our modern world need to do a better job defining, explaining, educating and leading in the public marketplace of ideas. And they aren't going to achieve that with the sort of smiley-face PR that BP had practiced prior to the Gulf oil spill.

Could Gulf Oil Spill Threaten Drinking Water?

Don Dunnington — 2010-06-12T19:33:27-05:00

We’ve all seen the pictures of oil drenched birds and read the stories about how BP’s blown oil well has devastated an entire fishing industry. Now hydrocarbon contamination of sea water used for feedstock of drinking water may be the next concern for those on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, of all the industrialized countries, the United States is one of the most important users of desalinated water. In Florida alone there are more than 130 desalination plants, and more are under construction according to a 2008 study reported by The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida.

This Oil Spill Poses Threats We Haven’t Seen Before
The problem of an oil spill a mile below the water’s surface goes beyond the extraordinary challenges of capping a well in such deep water. Most spills occur on the surface, and while the effects can be devastating, we can see where the oil is, and we have experience in dealing with it. "This is a three-dimensional spill," Columbia University oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam told The Wall Street Journal’s Robert Lee Holtz, "The physics, the chemistry and the biology action are very different when you have oil released from below."

Much of this oil has remained off shore and under the surface, which might be a bit of a break for nearby coastal communities, or it may be a threat for a far wider area. There are some 1,500 natural seep holes in the seafloor of the Gulf that leak an estimated 15 million gallons of oil annually. Most of that oil is broken down naturally by bacteria. But the BP well spewed up to 50,000 barrels a day; so it would take a lot of bacteria and a long time to eat all that oil before it does further damage.

Holtz quotes Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander, "We are not really dealing with a monolithic spill….We're dealing with about a 200-mile radius around the well site with thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of smaller patches of oil."

Billows of Oil Drops Too Small to See
As Holtz observed, low concentrations of oil are spreading "on subsea currents in billows of oil drops too small to see." The question is will the oil that remains below the surface be diluted enough by the sea, or broken down fast enough by bacteria so as not to pose a threat, for example, to those communities using sea water as feed stock for potable water.

According to Dallas-based FCI Environmental Inc., facilities along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast that use sea water for feed stock will need technologies in place that are capable of detecting hydrocarbon contamination of supply water. FCI Environmental is a 35-year-old, private company that develops, manufactures, markets and licenses fiber optic chemical sensors that produce continuous, real-time information on pollutants and contaminants in a variety of materials. The company’s PetroSentry in situ monitoring system uses fiber optic chemical sensor technology to detect total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) in water.

Other Challenges to Our Water Systems, Other Solutions
Are there other challenges to our water systems that are posed by this oil spill? Are there other companies offering solutions? Post a comment here on this blog article or send me an email.

Photo Credit: A Brown Pelican in Florida by Terry Foote.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator