Charles W. Conklin Jr. has extensive petroleum industry experience, with an emphasis on heat transfer equipment design, analysis, specification, and troubleshooting. Supporting his specialized expertise in heat transfer are his process design, refinery technical service, refinery quality control, and refinery operations experience.

Charles developed and applied his professional expertise at Gulf Oil, the Engineering Department of Sunoco, Inc., and HEA. He has extensive experience in the modeling and design of fired process heaters and in the design and operation of air cooled heat exchangers in both warm and very cold climates. He has designed shell and tube exchangers for extreme (temperature, pressure, size) operating conditions. He is a Past Chairman of the API subcommittee on Heat Transfer Equipment, and was involved for over 27 years with the writing and revision of heat transfer standards issued by the American Petroleum Institute. Selected projects include:

• Onsite examination of all the fired heaters in a major South American refinery; recommendations for operating improvements.

• Acted as expert witness for the US DOD in an action involving failure of heat transfer equipment.

• Support to clients during boiler performance testing by State environmental control inspection teams.

• Third Party reviews of heater and complex heat exchanger designs provided by vendors, on behalf of HEA clients.

• Observed and analyzed heat transfer equipment and performance in over 35 different petroleum refineries.

• Expert witness in a case involving Double Fired Coker Heater technology.

• Design and specification for purchase of a coker heater for Sun's Tulsa, OK refinery.

• Analysis of the causes for excess NO_x and CO emissions from a syngas reformer furnace, and correction of same.

• Analysis of the cause of a fired heater explosion, and development of remedial measures to prevent reoccurrence.

This page was last updated March 22, 2009