WaterWorld

http://www.waterworld.com/content/ww/en/articles/2002/04/zeta-rod-wins-environmental-award-for-los-angeles-convention-center.html

Tucson, Ariz., April 10, 2002 — After three years of close­ly mon­i­tored per­for­mance at the Los Angeles Convention Center of Zeta Corporation’s Zeta Rod™ sys­tem, the con­ven­tion cen­ter won a city-wide envi­ron­men­tal award and real­ized a three-year accu­mu­lat­ed sav­ings of $150,000.

Zeta Rod System at Los Angeles Convention Center

In mak­ing the announce­ment, Zeta President M. Michael Pitts, Jr, Ph.D. said that the City of Los Angeles Quality and Productivity Commission, after an eight-month eval­u­a­tion process, sin­gled out 20 city depart­ments out of 114 appli­cants for hon­ors in the cat­e­gories of Customer Service, Environmental, Entrepreneurship, E‑Business and Innovation and Creativity.

The Los Angeles Convention Center facil­i­ties staff won the Environmental Award for “the elim­i­na­tion of scale and cor­ro­sion clean­ing, increased employ­ee safe­ty, reduced water con­sump­tion, longer equip­ment life and an annu­al sav­ings of $50,000” in the oper­a­tion of the huge build­ing’s chillers and cool­ing tow­ers.

The core of the sys­tem is the Zeta Rod™, a patent­ed ceram­ic elec­trode using elec­tro­sta­t­ic dis­per­sion of min­er­als and organ­ic col­loids instead of chem­i­cals to pre­vent scal­ing, bio­foul­ing and cor­ro­sion in a wide vari­ety of indus­tri­al water treat­ment appli­ca­tions.

The pow­er­ful elec­tro­sta­t­ic field gen­er­at­ed by the Zeta Rod™ caus­es par­ti­cles and microbes in the water to repel each oth­er, thus pre­vent­ing them from stick­ing togeth­er or adher­ing to tanks, pip­ing and oth­er wet sur­faces. If deposits are already present, the Zeta Rod may be used to loosen and remove them.

During the first year and one-half of the appli­ca­tion, a total of 11 Zeta Rod elec­trodes were installed to pro­tect the large cool­ing tow­ers, a 500-ton chiller and two 1,250-ton chiller sys­tems, in the West Plant of the 870,000-square foot con­ven­tion cen­ter.

Meanwhile, sim­i­lar cool­ing equip­ment in the South Plant con­tin­ued with its usu­al chem­i­cal water treat­ment pro­ce­dure. At the con­clu­sion of the 18-month peri­od, a third-par­ty con­sult­ing firm con­clud­ed that in the West Plant treat­ed by Zeta Rod “all data trends appear to be show­ing pro­gram improve­ments across the board” and that “all (cor­ro­sion) coupons ana­lyzed show cor­ro­sion rates below indus­try stan­dards.”

* A coupon is a small met­al test strip by which cor­ro­sion rates can be cal­cu­lat­ed. Impressed and encour­aged, the Los Angeles Convention Center main­te­nance staff elect­ed to con­tin­ue the appli­ca­tion for anoth­er 18-month peri­od dur­ing which the Zeta Rod sys­tem would be employed exclu­sive­ly in both West and South Plants.

At the con­clu­sion of this final peri­od, the staff received con­grat­u­la­tions from the City’s Quality and Productivity Commission for locat­ing and adopt­ing a sys­tem that elim­i­nat­ed the use of chem­i­cals, not­ing “these chem­i­cals are dan­ger­ous to han­dle and drained water may present a haz­ard to the envi­ron­ment.”

In describ­ing how the Zeta Rod works, Dr. Pitts explained that the ceram­ic rod when ground­ed and placed in the envi­ron­ment of water, pip­ing and ves­sel walls, forms a capac­i­tor that alters the elec­tric charge of for­eign par­ti­cles in the water and caus­es them to repel each oth­er.

Although a pow­er sup­ply of 110 volts AC is con­vert­ed to 35,000 volts DC, the avail­able cur­rent in the sys­tem is very low and com­plete­ly safe for its oper­a­tors, Dr. Pitts advised.

Further infor­ma­tion about this and oth­er indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions of Zeta Rod is avail­able by vis­it­ing the com­pa­ny’s web­site: www.zetacorp.com.

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