5 services found

Peter L LaMontagne PE services

The Centrifuge Guy Used Equipment

I wish WEF would set up a used equipment exchange for the water and wastewater industry, but they have not. As I travel around the country, I see a lot of equipment sitting idle, often viewed by the owners as a liability, rather than the asset it could be. I"m interested in brokering this equipment. We can often find a centrifuge to match what you have, for 25% of the price of a new one. Look on the WEF website for a paper we gave at WEFTEC 2007, about one municipality that sole two surplus centrifuge to two other municipalities.

Consulting

Centrifuges are difficult to specify, because so much is nearly unknowable to the average engineer. Quality resides in the mechanical design, the bearings, the hard surfacing, and the process efficiency. For the most part, all manufacturers have access to the same components, so profit goes to he who builds the cheapest. And the technical data the vendors release? It"s typically is sales fluff.
I can take you through the centrifuge specifications, and tell you what they really mean, and where the loop holes are that will allow the manufacturer to walk away from the job, and leave you with little recourse. A little of my time up front will save you and your client a pot of money later on.

Expert Witness

Occasionally, despite all attempts to avoid a dispute sinking into a law suit, you think you might be facing one. You will need good, nationally recognized people, who are articulate and experienced. I have been an expert witness in two lawsuits, one of which actually went to trial! As it happens, in both cases, my client was satisfied with the outcome. My years of teaching all levels of persons how centrifuges work, comes in handy when the audience is non technical persons. Plus, I have spent countless hours reading specifications and working out compliance strategies. One client recently called and asked me to look over the contract and the plant startup reports to see if they had a good case to take to court. To be sure, the centrifuge manufacturer did a shoddy job optimizing, and the performance was a long way from that required by the spec, but the smoking gun was the sludge description.

Optimization

Optimization is very site specific. By clicking either link below, you can see a sample of the results from an optimization. Optimization goes well beyond the centrifuge performance. The typical plant is able to recoup my fee in savings with in a few months. The following is actual data, and is typical of an optimization report. I have deleted the site name to protect the owner"s privacy. It has often amazed me how long a plant will suffer poor performance, and high polymer bills, before having an expert come in and sort out the problems, and bring the performance back to what it was, or better.

Training

The cost of sludge concentration and disposal is one of the largest items in a plant’s Operating Budget. Reducing costs is not as simple as limiting polymer to 20 lb./ton. You have to know if adding $5 more polymer will save you $6 in disposal cost. How do you get more out of the centrifuge? Is the Polymer system OK? And when that’s done, how to balance the costs? This course, Cost Effective Centrifugation will change the way you think about sludge. You will learn how to diagnose and fix problems you have been living with (and paying for) for years. I can tell you right now, that the training the centrifuge manufacturer gave you when they commissioned the equipment was just enough to operate it, and no more. Operating the dewatering system without understanding it, runs up costs. Knowledge is the key to lowering your budget and keeping it low.