Experienced Chemical Engineer, PhD ChE, JD
Baton Rouge, LA 70802
Experience
Sept 2014 – Present. Consulting Engineer, Albemarle Corporation. Assisted operations, process optimization, and trouble-shooting at Albemarle’s Magnolia Arkansas complex. Responsibilities also included process simulation, statistical analyses, mentoring, and training.
Jan 1997 – Nov 2013. Advisor Process Design, Albemarle Corporation. Responsible for the design, retrofit, and startup of specialty chemical plants from initial conception to final commissioning. Specific duties include assignment of work and scheduling, economic evaluation, process simulation, P&ID development, specification writing, proposal review, sequence development, and startup. Most projects involve working closely with other design engineers, bench chemists, tech service representatives, pilot plant technicians, plant operations personnel, project engineers, and/or business people to achieve a successful conclusion.
Other responsibilities include mentoring and training of younger engineers, providing technical consulting to other groups, and disseminating technical and safety information. Have developed specific expertise in physical property estimation, VLE prediction, phase separation, mixing, reaction kinetics, reactive distillation, solids handling, and process safety. Created a 2000-volume process design library. Trained in 6-sigma methodology. Author or coauthor of nine patents. Adept at Aspen Plus and ChemCad.
Mar 1995 – Dec 1996. Advisor Pharmaceutical R&D, Albemarle Corporation. Headed a ten-member team to develop a new NSAID pharmaceutical. Duties included target identification, team formation, process conceptualization, process development, kinetic modeling, interim production, and eventual commercialization. Besides directing the activity of my team, also worked closely with operations, bench chemists, and regulatory groups. My team commercialized a Naproxen process, based on novel chiral catalyst in 18 months in South Carolina.
Jan 1994-Feb 1995. Advisor Environmental R&D, Albemarle/Ethyl Corporation. Responsible for the development of novel technologies for improvement of environmental compliance at all facilities. Coordinated with government regulators, consultants, corporate H&E, plant operations, and project engineering in pursuit of these goals. Conceived, designed, and built an artificial wetland for treatment of storm runoff at an Arkansas plant.
Apr 1992- Dec 1993. Manager Chemical R&D, Ethyl Corporation. Assigned to facilitate commercialization of R&D ideas. Supervised two to eight chemists and technicians in the area of alpha olefins, organometallics, and polyolefin catalyst R&D. Worked with customers to identify promising synthesis targets. Responsible for the development of several new processes from the bench, through pilot plant, and finally to interim production. Commercialized a family of metallocene catalysts and coactivators in Louisiana and South Carolina.
Dec 1989 – Mar 1992. Manager Process Development, Ethyl Corporation. Headed a five-member team to identify and develop new comonomer processes. Developed three processes on the bench and piloted a continuous process to produce 1-hexene, using novel catalytic technology. Portions of this technology were commercialized in Houston.
July 1987 – Nov 1989. Senior Development Engineer, Ethyl Corporation. Responsible for the process development of a new flame retardant from bench through pilot plant. Coordinated with other development engineers, chemists, design engineers, equipment vendors, and operating personnel during this project. Process was eventually commercialized at an Arkansas plant.
Education
BS (1980), MS (1985), and PhD (1987) in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas. Dissertation work covered the adsorption and surface reactions of C4 compounds over supported Group VIII metals using FTIR, GC-MS, XRD, electron microscopy, temperature-programmed desorption, and differential reactor techniques. Masters thesis dealt with synthesis gas and Fischer-Tropsch reactions over supported Fe catalysts. GPA was 3.8/4.0.
JD from Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA in 2010. Rank 15/106. Concentration in intellectual property. GPA was 3.4/4.0.
Other Interests
Member of Audubon Society and past President of the West Feliciana Recreation and Parks Commission. Responsible for the development of a $2MM sports complex in West Feliciana Parish. Current Chairman of the Awards Committee of local AIChE Chapter.
Enjoy traveling, bird watching, white-water rafting, and horseback riding.
Unit Operations Experience
Dryers and Heat Transfer. Flash dryers, fluidized-bed dryers, paddle dryers, disc dryers tray dryers, Turbo dryers, jacketed vessels, S&T exchangers, vertical and horizontal reboilers, thermosyphon reboilers, vaporizers, condensers, knock-back condensers, freeze condensers, direct-contact condensers, tempered loops, air coolers, graphite exchangers
Reactors. Agitated reactors, batch, semi-batch, continuous multiple CSTRs, plug-flow reactors, fixed-bed reactors, bubble reactors, pipe reactors with static mixers, gas-liquid reactors, reactive distillation.
Fluid Transport. Newtonian fluids, settling slurries, Bingham fluids, shear-thinning fluids, two-phase flow, compressible flow, choked flow, jet flow, flow through packed beds, fluidization, centrifugal pumps, peristaltic pumps, disc flow pumps, gear pumps, metering pumps, Roots blowers, reciprocating compressors, screw compressors, diaphragm compressors, liquid-ring vacuum pumps, screw vacuum pumps.
Mass Transfer. Continuous and batch liquid-liquid extraction, distillation with two liquid phases, distillation with solids, reactive distillation, superfractionation, batch distillation, sieve, valve, dual-flow trays, structured packing, random packing, absorption, stripping, fixed-bed adsorption.
Solids Operations. Precipitators, crystallizers, bag and cartridge filters, belt filters, rotary filters, basket centrifuges, cyclones, hopper flow, dense-phase and dilute-phase pneumatic conveying, screw conveying.
Chemical and Reaction Experience
Reactions. Bromination, hydrobromination, Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation, chloromethylation, decarboxylation, Grignard reactions, lithiation, hydroalumination, ethylene oligomerization, double-bond isomerization, hydrogenation, hydrolysis, alcoholysis, oxidations, reductions, Heck reaction, transalkylation, epoxidation, esterification, imidization, Finkelstein reaction, olefin metathesis, beta eliminations.
Chemicals Handled. Br2, BrCl, Cl2, H2, CO, HCl, HBr, BF3, PCl3, AlCl3, SO2, SO3, oleum, ...
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