Darrell Meinen has been involved with many facets of business from inspection services through all levels of advanced fitness-for-service engineering and software platforms. He has extensive experience in evaluation of thermal processes, fired heater design, operation and field assessment, root cause failure analysis, and life assessment for fired heater equipment in the petrochemical and refining sectors. For 13 years, Darrell was responsible for the process and mechanical design and field troubleshooting of furnaces for a major refinery heater manufacturer. During this period, he developed and implemented effective guidelines and training for conditions assessment of fired heaters. Additionally, for over 5 years, Darrell was Director of Sales and Applications Engineering for a major burner manufacturer for the refining and petrochemical industries. During this period, he was responsible for customer interface and many design features of the latest generation of ultra-low NOx burners.
Over the last 15+ years, Darrell has been involved with critical asset inspections, troubleshooting and fitness-for service evaluations, as well as mechanical services projects for Quest Integrity/Team Industrial Servics.
A selection of large projects Darrell has been involved in includes:
- Numerous customized heater, reformer, and pipeline inspection projects
- Plant-wide inspection and survey of all furnaces at multiple sites for major North American refineries
- Process design and engineering of over 500 different types of fired heaters including crude, vacuum, coker, CCR platformer, steam superheater, reboiler, and other types of furnaces
- Ultra-low NOx burner analysis and design for numerous facilities worldwide
Darrell has provided the technical assessment for plant turnarounds on various equipment including furnaces, exchangers, and pressure vessels, all in various services. He was an instructor at John Zink Training Institute in Tulsa, OK and at FM Global in Norwood, MA. He has also presented at the NPRA Annual Meeting.
