He and the other young men have embarked on this new epic journey as a fundraiser for the Lineberger Cancer Center at UNC. Last year’s cycle20ten bicycle ride across the country raised over $26,000 for the Lineberger Cancer Center. This effort was significant enough to warrant receipt of the 2010 Youth Philanthropic Award for North Carolina. They hope to beat last year’s fundraising with this new effort.

After having set the BSA record for longest bike ride last year, the group is trying to break the current BSA record for the longest backpacking trip with this hike. They’ll need to average about 16 to 18 miles a day, carrying everything they need in their backpacks, and sleeping in tents at night. You can follow their progress across the country with live GPS tracking on their website, along with a daily blog and photos. You can also donate in their honor on the website.

Social media is a powerful tool that allows people, organizations and companies to connect and engage with their communities much more immediately and more intimately. While blog posts and news releases are one way that we at Entex can get the word about about the exciting work that we’re doing, we also post short and more frequent updates to Twitter. From the Entex Twitter account we also connect with the water industry as a whole to stay abreast of current events and technology and we amplify a lot of interesting articles and tweets from other water industry leaders. Here’s an example:

You can also view more information about our company and our employees via our company LinkedIn page. This page tells a bit about Entex as a company, shows our Tweets and locations, and you can view a bit more personal information about some of our employees by clicking through to their personal LinkedIn profiles. Through LinkedIn we are connected to hundreds (maybe thousands!) of other water and wastewater industry   professionals, from engineers to academics to manufacturer’s reps and more. We also participate in some LinkedIn professional group discussions regarding new technologies and issues in the water quality field.

Why not follow Entex Technologies on Twitter and LinkedIn today? Join us and let us know what you think!

If you can enable your system to sustain a larger mass of “biology,” your system will be more efficient. That’s what Entex does. It provides two substrates that allow more of the beneficial microorganisms to grow and that allow them to stay in the treatment tanks longer. One, BioWeb, is a fabric that looks much like a soccer net, which Entex licenses from its manufacturer, and the other, BioPortz, is a floating medium that looks a lot like rotelle pasta. It’s all about “creating an environment that the right kind of biology likes,” said Flournoy. He added, “The real magic is . . . in manipulating the microbial environment to maximize the beneficial biology while minimizing the nuisance organisms.”

The article also discusses new challenges in wastewater treatment such as removing pharmaceutical compounds and achieving extremely low levels of nutrients like nitrogen. Read the article in its entirety here.

Entex Technologies Wins 2010 CED Award from Sarah Hubbell on Vimeo.

The Entex Technologies Webitat System is generally used as a secondary wastewater treatment application. Its primary purpose is to increase nitrification capacity by adding surface area for additional biomass growth.

Entex Technologies generally works as a subcontractor to the General Contractor and Consulting Engineer during municipal projects. There are only four steps involved in the Entex Webitat installation.

Step 1: The Lift

Entex Webitat units are assembled with a minimum of 6 heavy duty lifting lugs. This helps to maximize the customers lifting options. A crane is typically used to lift the modules. Shackles are recommended for crane lifts. Units can weigh up to 3,000 pounds. The rigging and lift process takes approximately 10 minutes per unit.

Step 2:  The Placement

Entex engineers design each unit to avoid interferences with other in basin equipment while simultaneously maximizing treatment benefits.  Under normal circumstances, the units are oriented such that the BioWeb^TM is parallel with the direction of flow. The placement and orientation of each unit normally takes less than 10 minutes.

Step 3:  The Anchor

Each leg has a square base plate with 3 holes for anchoring.  Once the units have been positioned correctly, each leg is typically anchored into the concrete using either epoxy style anchors or expansion anchors. Drilling will be required.  The anchor process typically takes 30 minutes per unit.

Step 4:  The Air Connection

Each Webitat unit comes preassembled with an integral coarse bubble air scour system located underneath each unit.  The air scour will be made of either 304L SS or SCH 80 PVC.  The final step in the installation process is connection of an external air supply to the 2” MNPT connection underneath each unit.  Connection time will take less than 5 minutes per unit.

Thus, each unit can easily be installed in under 1 hour.

This post brought to you by Jason Bowman

Laying pipe in the bioswale ditch.

It was back breaking work for the 75 volunteers who showed up to dig and move gravel and plant for eight hours straight. But the end result was gorgeous, and a beautiful spot amidst an ugly community.

My friend Dan Dair digging the bioswale.

Concurrently we held a water carnival, with about a 16 booths from sponsoring companies hosting hands on water related educational activities. Girl scouts, boy scouts, Brownie troops and just kids from the hood came by to pick up a passport, go through the activities and receive a pin.  The most profound activity from my point of view was a race up the grass levee with buckets full of water, which demonstrated what it is like for people in the third world who have to walk miles to retrieve their daily supply of drinking and washing water.

Girl scouts learning about transporting water.

I have never been so proud to be a part of a community of water engineers as I was last Saturday during the Bioswales in the Bayou project. Next year’s tentative plans have already begun, which may involve transforming an abandoned bus depot in South Central Los Angeles to a natural wetlands community park. Looking forward to being there!

Here’s a slideshow of lots of photos from the event.

Almost 200 people attended, a major increase for a conference which in the past has been relatively small and very focused. Notable was the strong international flair with attendees from 26 countries.  Among the organizers were Josh Boltz, of CH2M Hill, who served as Co-chair of the Scientific Committee, Julian Sandino, also of CH2M Hill, on the organizing committee and Entex’s own Sarah Hubbell. Many attendees were also well known in the IFAS community, including professionals like Jim McQuarrie of CH2M Hill, Chris Debarbadillo of Black & Veatch and Jamie Gellner of Hazen & Sawyer.

For me it was a great time to catch up in a small setting with old friends and colleagues, such as Cliff Merritt of Owens Corning, with whom we installed a fixed media IFAS system in an SBR.

While there were two parallel tracks of presentations, I couldn’t help but notice the IFAS sessions were standing room only, while the other track was lightly attended. Interestingly, while the presentations covered a broad range of issues, two distinct themes emerged for me. First, there was a strong focus on modeling, and the need to better predict system performance during the design stage. Denny Parker of Brown & Caldwell led the way in trying to pull together a coordinated effort in this area. Indeed, we (at Entex) spend a great deal of time refining and modifying our design models to better predict performance. The research program we led jointly with Dr. Andrew Schuler (then of Duke University) over three years at the South Durham facility has yielded a number of insights into the modeling process.

The second theme I noticed is best summarized by a presentation from Heather Phillips of Black & Veatch entitled “The Second Generation of IFAS and MBBR: Lessons to Apply”.  One takeaway from her talk  was that we’ve had almost a decade of well performing IFAS and MBBR systems operating in the US, and we as an industry are incorporating best practices in a new generation of systems. I agree with her assessment, and Entex is actively incorporating new improvements such as our patent pending retention screen scour system.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Entex’s Dick Perhson participating as a co-author along with Dipankar Sen of Santa Clara Valley Water Authority and Rip Copithorne of Stearns & Wheler and others on Green House Gas Emissions modeling, an intriguing and timely subject. There were some 70 or more papers and posters at the conference, all quite strong and well presented. The papers are all available from the Water Environment Federation.

The Biofilms Reactor Technology conference was a reminder of the broad and growing acceptance of IFAS and attached growth systems in our industry. Many challenges lie ahead, but I remain excited, and I look forward to the 2010 WEFTEC conference held this year in New Orleans in early October.  This conference usually hosts up to 18,000 or more with a broad international presence. Entex will be there exhibiting again for our 7^th year.  We’ll also be co-authoring two papers, continuing our string of presenting or co-authoring papers at every WEFTEC.  If you’re planning to attend, be sure to stop by our booth.

(Hat tip: Thirsty in Suburbia)

by CEO, Wayne Flournoy

I took a call on our main line a bit ago. The caller ID showed it was the engineer on a recent bid. Heidi Rupp had managed that bid, but she was out of the office.  I knew that our bid was the low price for our filter, but I also knew this was an evaluated bid which took into consideration many other factors than just the capital cost, including things such as experience, technical merit and operating costs.

Eagerly, I was hoping to hear the good news that we had been selected as the low evaluated supplier, and would be awarded the project. Instead, the engineer first asked for Heidi, and when I explained that she was out of the office and that perhaps I could help, he proceeded to explain his call.

He was calling because he finished his evaluation of all of the bids for the various components, some 50 or so bids in all. He wanted to wish us well in the final outcome, but his real reason for calling was to thank Heidi for being clear and comprehensive in her proposal. Of all the proposals he reviewed for all the equipment, only Heidi’s addressed every item and did it clearly.

He called to say thank you.

I told him how much I appreciated the call. I explained that as an equipment supplier, we rarely hear the simple thank you. His response was that as an engineer, he rarely does either, and as a result, he tries to make a point of saying thank you when it is warranted.

It made me think of the last time I called one of our suppliers out of the blue to thank them for a job well done. We all need to express appreciation for a job well done more often.

By the way, we did get the order.

 Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible

Jasper Lake, Alberta

Photograph by Sarah Hubbell, Copyright 2002