176 The One About Tagged Polymer Technologies

01/08/21 • 57 min

As water treatment professionals, we must continue to expand on our knowledge of the industry. Learning from others in the industry is a great way to do that! One key aspect of the water treatment industry is understanding polymers. Many of us regularly use these products but have no idea how they are created and where they come from

On the podcast today, we are joined again by Mike Standish, co-founder of Radical Polymers. Mike has over 28 years of experience in polymer additive design and development. Before forming Radical Polymers, Mike served in technical and business leadership roles within global, publicly-traded chemical companies. He is responsible for developing and patenting industry-leading polymers for use in the water treatment, oilfield, and detergent industries.

Mike will be talking all about tagged polymers and what’s new in this space over the last few years in today’s episode. After Mike’s presentation at the most recent AWT conference, I knew we needed to talk further and get this information to the entire industry. As James McDonald has said about Mike from him joining me on episode 14, “Mike is one of those presenters that you’d listen to even if he was reading from a phone book. He’s well-spoken and always highly informative in very relatable terms. Good guest!” I hope you learn something today and enjoy hearing from my friend Mike Standish!

Time Stamps:

Introducing Mike Standish [15:00]

What’s new since Mike’s last appearance on Scaling UP! H2O [17:11]

How does a product go from a concept to something we can use with a customer [18:22]

What does field testing look like? [21:28]

How we test for polymers [24:21]

How do we traditionally test for polymers? [32:45]

What do people need to consider when updating their polymer technology? [38:30]

How stable is the tag polymer with halogens? [43:14]

Where to learn more about tag polymers [45:18]

James’ Challenge: "Check makeup water for phosphate" [54:53]

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