RE: TWL: Re: Watermakers
Bob Peterson
Arild, I won't challenge your knowledge of water conditions on The Loop. As
indicated I have not done it, yet. I hadn't realized it was as contaminated
with nasty stuff as you indicate. As for bottled water, we use it
regularly, but are often asked about it since the cost often approaches that
of beer and soda! In fact, bottled water around here is over twice as
expensive as diesel! As we expect to mostly coastal cruise from Mexico to
Alaska, I think we'll continue with plans to install a watermaker for use in
that scenario.
REPLY
That would make sense, no argument concerning your particular application.
However, the issue of clean, safe potable water is becoming a global concern.
National Geographic has done a number of articles wherein this issue has been
raised.
Even here in urban North American population centers the issue is becoming
important.
Industrial pollution of water reservoirs continues to grow.
Failure to adequately monitor and regulate municipal water treatment plants has
resulted in fatalities ( Walkerton, Ontario, Canada to name one instance) and
the authorities charged with responsibility for such matters warn of more
problems to come.
There are two basic ways to create safe drinking water. Evaporation/distillation
and RO.
Evaporation/ distillation requires heat energy whereas RO only requires power
to drive a high pressure pump.
Steam ship propulsion has always required extremely pure water. much more so
that ordinary drinking water called for.
This in turn led to development of distillation equipment using waste heat from
the boilers to produce the required pure water.
Unfortunately this technology has not produced small scale units suitable for
pleasure yacht use in vessels under 50 feet and which do not have continuously
running power plants that produce sufficient waste heat.
One company called Nautilus does manufacture counter top distillation units for
domestic use but they sell them to a market where 230V Ac is the norm.
Another company in New Orleans produces evaporation water makers running off
waste engine heat and these are used on board commercial vessels where internal
combustion engines run 24/7 and thus produce sufficient heat.
This is likely the most viable option for a water maker on a boat doing the
Great Loop.
The same caveat applies. Pre filtration to remove sediment is a given. A regular
maintenance chore would be the cleaning out of residues in the evaporator.
Picture the calcium build up in a kettle or coffee maker. The evaporator would
be much worse and require monthly cleaning.
The residue would contain a concentration of industrial pollutants including
toxic chemicals etc.
This would require some care in handling.
I'm not sure how many people would chose this option over paying for bottled
drinking water instead.
It becomes an individual choice I guess.
regards
Arild
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Re ICW water conditions, this morning my friend changed his 2' sock type
pre-filter on his US Watermaker. He said he got about 100 gallons out of it
here in Vero Beach which means he filtered 1,000 gallons before it clogged.
His pre-filter is an order of magnitude larger than most watermaker filters
so Arild's point about pre-filtering is certainly well taken!
You can make water anywhere, but there is a carrying cost in time and/or
materials depending on the quality of the input water.
Regards....
Phil Rosch
Old Harbor Consulting
M/V Curmudgeon MT-44TC
Currently moored in Vero Beach, FL
I'm still shaking my head at the colossal ignorance of the technical support
people we find in many companies.
I just got off the phone to Raritan Engineering.
I had several technical questions concerning the operation and electrical
parameters of their Lectra-San product.
They stipulate a certain minimum voltage below which the unit will apparently
not function.
I called up to get more details.
- Did this mean a safety circuit cut off operation when the minimum threshold
was reached or would performance simply degrade below this point.
Answer:
Well the orange light blinks and then the red light blinks.
- What happens when the Dc voltage drops below the specified minimum.
Does the amount of chlorine produced from electrolysis of salt water decrease or
does a safety circuit cut off any operation?
Answer:
Don't know, the lights blink.
At that point a "senior" tech was called into the conversation.
This person was bewildered by my question. Subsequently he indicated that a
"normal" 12V DC system would always be running at 13.6V because that was the
voltage for a "full battery"
I then asked how this could be if the boat was anchored out and no charging
source like a genset or engine was running.
His reply was: well normally the boat is dockside and the charger provides the
full 13.6 volts.
Hey guys, don't you know that many harbors and marinas are designated zero
discharge zones where NO toilet effluent of any description is allowed.
When I questioned the design philosophy of assuming a battery voltage of 13.6V
the senior tech insisted that this was always the case.
Pointing out that as a battery becomes discharged this voltage drops elicited
a comment of dis-belief from the tech.
At that point I advised them to read Battery 101 in the ABYC standards.
Sheesh!!
And they call that engineering??
How can a company like that claim to be at the forefront of design innovation in
marine sanitation?
regards
Arild
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Arild,
As they say, "been there, done that". Went through the same scenario with
Lectra-San a few years back for another boat. What they don't tell you, for
reasons I don't understand, is that with low voltage the electrolysis
doesn't effectively treat the effluent and you are apt to be discharging
minimally treated effluent into the water. I pursued the matter with
several levels of "support" and eventually got that admission, plus the
statement that "90% of all problems Lectra-San's experience is due to low
voltage". As someone who's worked on more LectraSan's that I'd care to
(assisting friends typically) I can appreciate their comment because many
installations had sub-par wiring, even if the batteries were fully charged.
A former supervisor at a Taiwan boat builder told me that although the
wiring specifications might call for #10 gauge wire to the electric toilets,
in practice if 10-gauge wasn't available that day, they did NOT halt
production. They might use #8 (lucky you), but more typically they would
substitute #12 or #14, with a resulting voltage drop that hindered LectraSan
performance, and as we discussed, often damaged Jabsco electric toilet pumps
that tend to deteriorate rather quickly when on a voltage diet.
So while the tech folks you talked with clearly were clueless, at least we
can understand where their penchant for saying "low voltage" comes from,
given the typical installations we see of their products.
Bob Peterson
47' Lien Hwa CMY
"Lopaka Nane"
San Francisco
-----Original Message-----
From: Arild Jensen
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:44 PM
To: trawler-world-list@lists.samurai.com
Subject: TWL: Design approach and people knowledge.
I'm still shaking my head at the colossal ignorance of the technical support
people we find in many companies.
I just got off the phone to Raritan Engineering. I had several technical
questions concerning the operation and electrical parameters of their
Lectra-San product. They stipulate a certain minimum voltage below which
the unit will apparently not function. I called up to get more details.
- Did this mean a safety circuit cut off operation when the minimum
threshold was reached or would performance simply degrade below this point.
Answer:
Well the orange light blinks and then the red light blinks.
- What happens when the Dc voltage drops below the specified minimum.
Does the amount of chlorine produced from electrolysis of salt water
decrease or does a safety circuit cut off any operation?
Answer:
Don't know, the lights blink.
At that point a "senior" tech was called into the conversation.
This person was bewildered by my question. Subsequently he indicated that a
"normal" 12V DC system would always be running at 13.6V because that was the
voltage for a "full battery"
I then asked how this could be if the boat was anchored out and no charging
source like a genset or engine was running.
His reply was: well normally the boat is dockside and the charger provides
the full 13.6 volts.
Hey guys, don't you know that many harbors and marinas are designated zero
discharge zones where NO toilet effluent of any description is allowed.
When I questioned the design philosophy of assuming a battery voltage of
13.6V the senior tech insisted that this was always the case.
Pointing out that as a battery becomes discharged this voltage drops
elicited a comment of dis-belief from the tech.
At that point I advised them to read Battery 101 in the ABYC standards.
Sheesh!!
And they call that engineering??
How can a company like that claim to be at the forefront of design
innovation in marine sanitation?
regards
Arild
Arild, with a few exceptions, the so-called technical support staff (at
least in the computer business) is geared to answer simple questions from
tech-phobic individuals. ("It says to hit any key. Where is the any key
and how hard should I hit it?")
Anybody in tech support qualified to answer the kinds of questions you are
posing has already been promoted into the engineering groups.
Would YOU apply for a job in tech support??
I'm still shaking my head at the colossal ignorance of the
technical support people we find in many companies.
Hal wrote:
Anybody in tech support qualified to answer the kinds of questions you are
posing has already been promoted into the engineering groups.
Would YOU apply for a job in tech support??
REPLY
As a matter of fact, I began at Statpower in Tech Support.
Concerning Raritan, I specifically asked to be passed upwards to someone in
engineering and this was supposedly done.
At least the second person was identified as a senior technical expert who was
supposed to know about design issues.
It was the engineering guy who did not know much about battery systems and who
assumed that the float voltage of a charge was the same as the actual terminal
voltage of a full battery not connected to a charging source. Every basic
battery book covers this detail.
When I pointed out that he was reading the surface charge because the battery
had recently been taken off the charger, he asked what a surface charge was.
Duh!!
I pointed out that a treatment system was likely to be used when the boat was
anchored out and thus not connected to a charging source.
In addition, why would the design engineers assume that a boat secured
alongside a marina dock could dump treated sewage overboard.
By now it is almost universal that marina slips and such are a "zero discharge"
zone.
If Raritan is truly concerned with manufacturing a sewage treatment device that
really meets all relevant EPA and other requirements I would expect them to
design for worst case scenario. meaning a nearly dead battery voltage or perhaps
excessive voltage drop.
In other words the system should work within design parameters when the
supply voltage at the Lectra San device is as low as 10.0 V.
Other manufacturers have dealt successfully with this exact same problem by
incorporating a switch mode power supply.
Look at nearly any commercial grade electronics devices. They are rated 10 - 40
V DC. Current draw is given as a function of supply voltage.
In other words a high e supply voltage requires a lower current draw.
This is an established design approach which has been in use for more than a
decade.
In addition, they do not provide a product powered by an AC power supply which
is more common on board larger yachts.
In actual fact, most large yachts use AC powered electric toilets, so I am now
wondering why Raritan does not expect to serve this market.
Does it mean that all megayachts have holding tanks or that they dump untreated
effluent overboard?
regards
Arild
I'm still shaking my head at the colossal ignorance of the
technical support people we find in many companies.
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In defense of the teck-weenies, you need to know how the chain of command
works. Most tech support shops have "level 1" people answer the phone.
They know about the "any key". Level 2 techs are in the background when the
simple answers don't solve the problem. When I have a problem I
respectfully ask for the "level 3" techs who actually know how everything
works.
The trick is getting to the level 3 folks. Arild, for example would be a
level 3 if he opted to be in that business.
Regards....
Phil Rosch
Old Harbor Consulting
M/V Curmudgeon MT-44TC
Currently moored in Vero Beach, FL
<<One company called Nautilus does manufacture counter top
distillation units for domestic use but they sell them to a
market where 230V Ac is the norm.>>
Some friends of mine have a tabletop distillation unit they
bought at Sears a couple of years ago. I think it cost about
$60, and runs on 110v AC. I think it makes a couple of gallons a
day, which they use for drinking.
Mark Richter, Winnie the Pooh
presently on the hard in Indiantown, FL
...I pursued the matter with
several levels of "support" and eventually got that admission, plus the
statement that "90% of all problems Lectra-San's experience is due to low
voltage". As someone who's worked on more LectraSan's that I'd care to
(assisting friends typically) I can appreciate their comment because many
installations had sub-par wiring, even if the batteries were fully charged.
Not only sub-par wiring, but sea water calcium carbonate buildup on the
electrodes, can prevent the unit from treating. The electrodes have to
be cleaned periodically (up to 4x/year in warm waters)...which does NOT
require opening it up, but only a solution of muriatic acid and water
used according to directions in the manual.
Another common culprit is failure to add a separate dedicated circuit
for the L/S that's shared by nothing else except an electric toilet.
Putting it on a circuit shared by other devices/equipment will result in
a voltage drop to L/S if they're also running.
And no matter what the wire size, if the distance from the battery is
too far, that will also result in a voltage drop.
Peggie
Peggie Hall
Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987
Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and
Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor"
http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_rid_of_boat_odors.html
http://shop.sailboatowners.com/detail.tpl?fno=400&group=327