Paul Kowalski joined Equity in 2017 as a Materials & Corrosion Engineer. With Equity, Paul has performed dozens of metallurgical failure analyses and has provided recommendations to mitigate similar occurrences in the future. He has been a part of several mechanical integrity gap assessments as well as leading several of his own, ranging from single process units to entire refineries. Additionally, Paul has audited the main process piping and pressure vessel equipment of 15 process units for HTHA risk considering current and historical/future operating conditions. Paul has performed over 40 HTHA FFS evaluations of critical fixed equipment and main process piping, ultimately establishing a life-cycle management program for each component. He specializes in maintaining materials and corrosion engineering practices for the Fertilizer Industry (currently NH3 and Urea). In his day-to-day responsibilities, Paul routinely provides materials and corrosion guidance, both internal to Equity and external to clients. Several peer-reviewed publications are credited to Paul in addition to several presentations at industry conferences (AiChE and NACE) as well as instruction of multiple training courses.
Before joining Equity, Paul worked as a Materials and Corrosion Engineer for Duramax Marine with focus on the heat exchanger product line. He conducted several metallurgical failure analyses to determine the root cause of failure and recommended changes to operations to prevent failure in the future. Additionally, Paul investigated key variables related to brazed joint integrity as well as designing experiments to provide further understanding.
Paul has also worked as a Corrosion Engineer for Dominion East Ohio Gas, where he focused on Risk-Based Inspection in the storage field. Paul provided expert input on recommending inspection locations as well as determining optimized Corrosion Monitoring Locations (CMLs).
Paul previously worked as a Process Engineer for Swagelok in the Valve Services Group (VSG), where he led process improvements for increased efficiency. Additionally, he designed new valve testing components utilizing SolidWorks 3D, which led to improved workflow and reduced testing times.
