Metro Hydro-Board Solid Chemical Water Treatment
May 1, 2009 — Roll out the barrel? And you'll have a barrel of fun? Uh uh. Roll out the barrel of your usual water-treatment chemicals and you'll have a barrel of death!!! That's in the most extreme cases, of course, and primarily involves opening the barrels, knocking them over, and, oy, you don't want to know what happens when you mix sodium bisulfite with an aqueous solution of sodium hypochlorite. And heaven forbid the sodium hypochlorite ever gets in with the calcium hypochlorite and maybe makes things go boom!
That said, we're sure you're properly handling all those 55-gallon drums of on-site chemicals for treating your drinking water or HVAC cooling tower. But if you ever want an alternative, you might consider this new drumless system using solid concentrates.
Developed by the Queens-based Metro Group, founded in 1925, this propriety delivery system uses environmentally sound "solid-board technology" (see above) mounted directly on your tower to deliver the cleaning agents, biocides and all those other goodies that keep us from getting the likes of Legionnaires' disease. The automatic delivery of concentrated solids eliminates the need to keep 55-gallon drums of chemicals around, and, the company says, helps minimize both your storage needs and your staff's exposure to chemicals and back injury.
Metro also claims its system reduces operating costs and brings energy savings due to "more efficient chemical application/delivery [and] available battery-operated chemical actuation and system conductivity control — all of which translates to enhanced heat transfer by reduced corrosion, deposition and microbiological fouling."
Given its nearly 85 years in the business, we'd be inclined to give Metro the benefit of the doubt. Because barrels of caustic chemicals does not sound more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Hmm ... barrel of monkeys. Never understood that term. A barrell of puppies, now that sounds fun. But whoever came up with the line about monkeys, well ... there must have been something in the water.
The Metro Group, Inc. • 50-23 Twenty-Third Street, Long Island City, N.Y. 11101 • (718) 729-7200 • toll-free (800) 925-4948 •
aseeman@metrogroupinc.com