Senior Applications Engineer (PEARL)

At Aquatech, we tackle the challenges of water scarcity and complexity by leveraging technology, expertise, and financing to deliver comprehensive solutions that reduce carbon and recycled water footprint. As a leading global provider of water and process technology solutions, we help the world's most recognized companies achieve their sustainability and operational goals by implementing innovative approaches for water reuse, desalination, minimal and zero liquid discharge, and critical minerals recovery. Our work catalyzes the transition toward a more sustainable future and showcases our commitment to addressing water's role in climate adaptation. Learn more at www.aquatech.com.  

Aquatech immediately needs a full-time Senior Applications Engineer to work remotely or on-site in our Canonsburg, PA, Hartland, WI, or Houston, TX branch office. The hours of this position are Monday - Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. 

Job Summary:

Develop and continuously improve the process designs for the PEARL platform with technical ownership of primary systems including Direct Lithium Extraction, Eluate Conditioning, Crystallization and Refining. Translate new intellectual property into scalable and licensable PEARL process designs. Serve as a member of the licensing group’s flowsheet design team under the Engineering Lead for PEARL Process.

Job Description:

• Develop integrated PEARL process designs and customer-specific flowsheets covering DLE, eluate conditioning, crystallization and product recovery.

• Serve as the primary technical owner for eluate conditioning, including impurity management, chemical adjustment, concentration, water balance.

• Develop expertise and mastery of DLE, conditioning and crystallization process design and provide technical coverage across all PEARL process blocks as required.

• Build and maintain standardized process modules, process-flow diagrams, mass and energy balances, design assumptions, operating envelopes and performance models for PEARL licensing packages.

• Work with Applied Development to incorporate newly generated intellectual property, experimental findings and validated process improvements into PEARL design standards.

• Identify, evaluate and incorporate well-tested third-party technologies that improve process performance, product quality, recovery, water or reagent efficiency, operability or commercial competitiveness.

• Maintain clear differentiation between validated platform design inputs, emerging development concepts and project-specific assumptions.

• Assess how variations in brine chemistry, DLE media performance and eluate composition affect downstream technology selection, reagent consumption, water usage, recovery and product quality.

• Evaluate and justify process improvements with engineering and economic tradeoff studies to drive down OPEX, CAPEX of the process and improve overall customer economics.

• Coordinate with the other PEARL Application Engineers to maintain a consistent and technically defensible end-to-end platform flowsheet.

• Collaborate with Aquatech Subject Matter Experts throughout the organization.

• Work with Applied Development, laboratory teams, external technology providers and engineering resources to define test plans, interpret results and establish scale-up requirements.

• Support opportunity screening, FEL-0 concept development, technical proposals, customer discussions, process guarantees and licensing packages.

• Identify technical risks, data gaps and development priorities early enough to support licensing, investment and go/no-go decisions.

• Maintain design standards, calculation tools, technology evaluations, decision records and lessons learned for reuse across PEARL projects.

• Other duties as assigned.

Skill Requirements:

Proficient in Microsoft products such as excel, word and PowerPoint.

Experience with process flowsheet modelling software (such as Aspen, Metsim, or OLI)

Benefits:

Aquatech offers a comprehensive benefits package, including paid time off, company-paid holidays, and a 401K plan (all benefits are based on eligibility)

Essential Functions:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed above and below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

Physical Job Demands:

Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally and/or a negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting most of the time, limited walking and standing.

• Bachelor’s in chemical, process, or water-treatment engineering

• Experience in industrial water treatment, membrane systems, ion exchange, hydrometallurgy, chemical production or lithium processing

• Strong process-modeling and mass-balance capabilities

• Ability to translate laboratory data, new intellectual property and vendor performance information into scalable process designs

• Willingness and ability to build working expertise across DLE, eluate conditioning and crystallization

• Experience with technology qualification, chemical production plant operations and controls process scale-up, early-stage technology development or licensed process platforms preferred

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