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Water Recycling, Innovation, and Industry Wisdom with Dr. Kelle Zeiher
Episode 452
Industrial cooling is one of the biggest levers industrial facilities can pull on water use—and it's getting harder to ignore as data centers and other high-heat operations grow. Returning guest Dr. Kelle Zeiher (Project Manager at Garratt Callahan) breaks down what water reuse looks like when you move past slogans and into the realities of pretreatment, concentrate management, footprint, and cost.
Cooling water reuse: the scale of the opportunity
Dr. Zeiher reframes "drought" beyond rainfall, emphasizing aquifer recharge and the limits of focusing only on household restrictions. She contrasts domestic use (~12%) with the much larger share tied to cooling (~50%), then connects that to why optimizing industrial cooling matters—especially when operations sit in arid, desert-like regions with limited water availability. She also shares a data-center statistic that puts "the cloud" into physical terms: ~53 gallons of purified water per gigabyte of data stored to keep environments cool enough for microchips.
Higher cycles, RO blending, and the concentrate question
The conversation moves into practical tower strategy: driving cycles up as far as the water and metallurgy allow. Dr. Zeiher describes a case moving from three cycles to six with RO blending and pretreatment, resulting in millions of gallons saved annually. From there, the engineering problem becomes unavoidable: higher cycles create a concentrated cooling-water stream, and RO adds its own waste stream. The key operational question is how to manage both streams without trading water savings for disposal and reliability issues.
Minimal liquid discharge, and the AEROS approach
"Zero liquid discharge" (ZLD) remains a theoretical target, but Dr. Zeiher is clear about the realities: ZLD can require large equipment and high energy demand. She shares a cost example where a 20 gpm ZLD concept came in at nearly $8 million in capital. Her team's approach focuses on minimal liquid discharge (MLD)—recovering roughly 80–90% of water rather than 98–99%, while reducing energy intensity and footprint. She introduces AEROS (Aqueous Recovery Optimization System): rapid precipitation/conditioning, followed by sequential mechanical and membrane filtration, then an RO polishing step to return purified water.
Industry wisdom: proof-first projects, relationships, and AI
You'll also hear Dr. Zeiher's "proof-first" pathway—bench-style testing, then a 5–10 gpm flow-through evaluation in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (with BioLargo)—plus a process guarantee framework and how credits can apply toward a final system. She closes with leadership lessons on documentation, continuity of customer care, and practical guidance for working with AI: feed it strong technical inputs, then apply human critical thinking before recommendations reach customers.
Listen to the full conversation above. Stay engaged, keep learning, and continue scaling up your knowledge!
Timestamps
02:40 — End-of-year reflection becomes a professional challenge: keep learning fast enough to keep systems stable and clients confident.
05:50 — "Dry December" as a discipline story—used to tee up Trace's broader point: habits beat calendar-based resolutions.
12:00 — Water You Know
13:10 — The events page pitch: planning early protects training time and reduces last-minute operational fire drills.
17:00 — Dr. Kelle Zeiher returns aft
Published on 2 weeks, 1 day ago