• Executive VP deBruyn notes it also offers sensors, controllers, RO, ozone and UV solutions.
by Carlos David Mogollón, Managing Editor
Garth deBruyn’s business card reads Pittsburgh, PA, but his accent is telling of his Canadian roots. The executive vice president for North America at ProMinent Fluid Controls actually lives in Guelph, Ontario.
deBruyn got his start in the oil & gas industry in Fort McMurray, Alberta, north of Edmonton, where oil sands enjoy boom times since petroleum prices shot up several years ago. He left to join industrial water treatment specialist Glegg Industries, one of General Electric’s first acquisitions in water treatment in 1999 and which – along with GE Betz and GE Osmonics – first formed GE Water & Process Technologies. But deBruyn had left after five years at the company nearly a decade before.
In 1990, he joined ProMinent, whose parent was formed in Heidelburg, Germany, 30 years earlier and is a pioneer in metering pump technology and more. deBruyn notes the founding Dulger family, with roots in disinfection at a German dairy operation, invented the solenoid metering pump for chemical feed and began expanding right away into larger motor-driven pumps, sensors and controllers as well as related disinfection technologies such as reverse osmosis pretreatment, chlorine dioxide, ozone and ultraviolet light – reinventing the company roughly every several years. Today, it has revenues of about $500 million with 48 subsidiaries and 60 agents with exclusive rights to sell its products worldwide.
ProMinent is strong in power, oil & gas, refineries, mining and chemical processing – anywhere with a wet process requiring chemical feed to maintain water quality. In the power market, deBruyn says, it supplies technologies to ensure high purity water for steam generators, including anti-scale, anti-biofilm and anti-corrosion dosing equipment for boilers, heat exchangers and cooling towers. Likewise, in the oil industry it’s heavily invested in antifoam and demulsifier dispensing technology, as well as regeneration pumps for RO/DI mixed beds. That’s not to mention disinfection or chemical filtration needs for excess wastewater.
On Nov. 1, ProMinent bought boiler and cooling controls specialist Aquatrac Instruments Inc., of Rancho Cucamonga, CA. And two recent advances include its Orlita line of high-pressure metering pumps and delta dosing pumps with optoDrive smart technology. Click here to read "An Interview with ProMinent's Garth deBruyn" in full in Q&A format.
