23-12: Are We Treating Beakers or Systems: Laboratory Testing and Validation in a Field Context

Laboratory testing of water treatment programs for scale and corrosion control are run and used for several purposes:

To evaluate new inhibitors and treatments and predict field performance over a range of systems, and operating parameters.

To optimize treatments and determine the minimum effective dosage.

To compare existing treatments to proposed treatments.

To develop "technically accurate and appropriate" data for sales literature and promotion.

To explore new areas such as inhibitor interaction with respect to synergy and antagonism.

Results should correlate well to field results under the same or similar conditions. This presentation discusses parameter selection and test experimental design to avoid simulations predicting stellar results in a beaker but result in abject failure when applied in the wild to operating systems.