Expert Troubleshooting Package Plant Problems
I have had cause before to write about problems with package sewage treatment plants, and the companies who supply, install and maintain them, based on long experience as a troubleshooter and expert witness.
I'm presently finalising the detailed design of a commercial effluent treatment system which uses a packaged plant as the biological stage, and it seems that nothing has improved since I last looked at things.
It seems the market is still dominated by salesmen whose only technical support seems to be from former tanker drivers who have done a 3-day package plant maintenance course. Calling a monkey a senior engineer doesn't make it so, I'm afraid.
Many of these "senior engineers" and their managers have been sharing their half-baked opinions with me and my client in a tone which makes it clear that they consider themselves experts. All I have learned from these exchanges is how so many people I meet are so confused about what they need. These know-nothings are so sure of themselves, but they are so frequently wrong.
To list a few of the falsehoods I have recently had presented forcefully to me as fact:
Businesses do NOT have a right to discharge trade effluent to sewer if the business is long established. A right like this might have been established with respect to purely domestic sewage, but there is no right to discharge trade effluent.
Peristaltic dosing pumps are NOT generally speaking more reliable and lower maintenance than piston pumps.
There is no magic liquid additive which can get a biological treatment plant to produce compliant effluent if its aeration system is not functional.
It is almost universally the case that there are no experts working at package plant supply and installation companies. The experts who designed the plants do not work there any more, if they ever did. I designed a series of these plants once. It was a design-only contract for a consumer product, and this is the normal case. The designers have made them idiot proof, which has given some idiots the idea that they understand them, but they do not. They actively misunderstand them.
If you want expert advice, see an independent like me. Salesmen and tanker drivers are not professional engineers, whatever their job title. Their advice is neither expert nor unbiased. Caveat emptor!
I'm presently finalising the detailed design of a commercial effluent treatment system which uses a packaged plant as the biological stage, and it seems that nothing has improved since I last looked at things.
It seems the market is still dominated by salesmen whose only technical support seems to be from former tanker drivers who have done a 3-day package plant maintenance course. Calling a monkey a senior engineer doesn't make it so, I'm afraid.
Many of these "senior engineers" and their managers have been sharing their half-baked opinions with me and my client in a tone which makes it clear that they consider themselves experts. All I have learned from these exchanges is how so many people I meet are so confused about what they need. These know-nothings are so sure of themselves, but they are so frequently wrong.
To list a few of the falsehoods I have recently had presented forcefully to me as fact:
Businesses do NOT have a right to discharge trade effluent to sewer if the business is long established. A right like this might have been established with respect to purely domestic sewage, but there is no right to discharge trade effluent.
Peristaltic dosing pumps are NOT generally speaking more reliable and lower maintenance than piston pumps.
There is no magic liquid additive which can get a biological treatment plant to produce compliant effluent if its aeration system is not functional.
It is almost universally the case that there are no experts working at package plant supply and installation companies. The experts who designed the plants do not work there any more, if they ever did. I designed a series of these plants once. It was a design-only contract for a consumer product, and this is the normal case. The designers have made them idiot proof, which has given some idiots the idea that they understand them, but they do not. They actively misunderstand them.
If you want expert advice, see an independent like me. Salesmen and tanker drivers are not professional engineers, whatever their job title. Their advice is neither expert nor unbiased. Caveat emptor!
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