Mr. Joe M. Bonem
Joe Bonem’s highly productive five-decade career has included over three decades in Polymers manufacturing and process development with Exxon Chemical as well as 10+ years in consulting. Joe’s areas of expertise include all phases of chemical engineering including Technology Transfer and Assimilation, Process Development and Scaleup, Project Basis Development and Process Design, Plant Performance Improvements and Safety Assessment of New and Existing Technology. Mr. Bonem is experienced in the development and mentoring of young engineers. He has extensive international problem solving experience in France, England, Italy, and Japan.
Typical assignments have been as follows:
• Scaleup and Process Design of a proprietary catalyst system.
• Development of new technology utilizing commercial plant tests that allowed expanding the capacity of a polymer plant by 50% for 2% of the original investment.
• Development of modeling techniques to allow scaleup of drying equipment from bench scale to commercial size operation.
• Mathematical modeling of polymerization processes to determine the response to new catalyst systems.
• Engineering/Operability reviews of the design of new polymer plants (pilot and commercial).
• Determining the cause of severe fouling in a polymerization process. The problem solution involved the utilization of simplified dynamic simulation techniques to trace the problem to a feed impurity present at a level less than 100 parts per billion.
• Development of techniques for handling an adiabatic exothermic rapid reaction occurring in a batch catalyst preparation process.
• Determination that a gas phase reactor fouling problem was not due to particle melting but was due to the extrusion of a rubber phase from the center of the particle.
Joe has published 3 magazine articles on improving plant operations as well as a book entitled Process Engineering Problem Solving. He has taught problem solving courses in the United States as well as in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. He holds 2 U.S. patents. He has a BS Ch E degree with honors from the University of Colorado.
Typical assignments have been as follows:
• Scaleup and Process Design of a proprietary catalyst system.
• Development of new technology utilizing commercial plant tests that allowed expanding the capacity of a polymer plant by 50% for 2% of the original investment.
• Development of modeling techniques to allow scaleup of drying equipment from bench scale to commercial size operation.
• Mathematical modeling of polymerization processes to determine the response to new catalyst systems.
• Engineering/Operability reviews of the design of new polymer plants (pilot and commercial).
• Determining the cause of severe fouling in a polymerization process. The problem solution involved the utilization of simplified dynamic simulation techniques to trace the problem to a feed impurity present at a level less than 100 parts per billion.
• Development of techniques for handling an adiabatic exothermic rapid reaction occurring in a batch catalyst preparation process.
• Determination that a gas phase reactor fouling problem was not due to particle melting but was due to the extrusion of a rubber phase from the center of the particle.
Joe has published 3 magazine articles on improving plant operations as well as a book entitled Process Engineering Problem Solving. He has taught problem solving courses in the United States as well as in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. He holds 2 U.S. patents. He has a BS Ch E degree with honors from the University of Colorado.
