Dave Bartholic has spent the majority of his 35 years in the oil refining industry involved with the Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) Process or related circulating fluid systems. He has been involved in all aspects of the technology; startup, design, technical services, catalyst supply, catalyst testing, catalyst formulation, process research, FCC development, environmental and process sales and licensing. He has been involved in over thirty different FCCU startups. These included new units and revamps and many were first of their kind FCC systems employing new developments and technology. Dave has traveled worldwide discussing FCCU operations and offering solutions to problems and innovative ways to increase FCCU and refinery profitability. Dave has over 20 USA patents. He has presented numerous technical papers and seminars on a worldwide basis.

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Richard's educational background includes a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and an MBA from the University of Houston. He has over 21 years of industrial experience and has served as a process/operations engineer over facilities which included operations such as crude fractionation, solvent extraction, solvent dewaxing, desulfurization, reforming and sulfur production. Richard also has experience in refinery "troubleshooting," operations planning and logistics as well as economics and capital expenditure analysis.

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After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Louisiana Tech University with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in 2002, Michael came to work for RES. He has trained and worked extensively with HYSYS, PRO II, and Microsoft Excel to design and troubleshoot various plant processes, including Hydrotreaters, Hydrogen Plants, Sour Water Strippers, and Catalytic Reformers.

Michael has gained tremendous plant experience by working closely with Bob and other RES engineers during catalyst regenerations, turnarounds, and troubleshooting problems in the plant. He has inspected reactor internals, loaded catalyst in hydrotreaters and catalytic reformers, participated in turnarounds, and gained experience in many other areas.

He is currently serving in the role of a plant process engineer for a refinery without a process engineer. This includes monitoring each unit, troubleshooting any problems, and looking for ways to improve the profits of the refinery.

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Chuck earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wyoming, a M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Oklahoma State University, and spent one year working towards his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Colorado School of Mines before leaving academia to work in industry. He has over 20 years of diverse chemical engineering experience including refining, oil production, and as a teaching and research assistant. He is a registered professional engineer in Colorado, Alaska, and Louisiana.

Chuck’s experience includes unit monitoring and trouble shooting, as well as planning and execution of turn arounds for ‘fixed-bed’ catalytic reformers, crude units, hydrotreaters, and sulfuric acid alkylation plants. He has been involved in the initial start up of a distillate hydrotreater, sour water stripper, and a sulfur recovery unit. He has worked on the design of Alaskan North Slope production facilities and has worked as an operations engineer in a Saudi Arabian refinery. His industry experience with both operating companies and engineering design/construction companies gives Chuck a unique perspective in his approach to problem diagnosis and resolution.

With RES chuck has worked on the design of several hydrotreaters. Chuck also provides consulting services to refiners on the operation of catalytic reformers. Chuck is involved with field services including catalyst loading, unit operations, and startups. Chuck has also helped several refineries with economic evaluation of processing options.

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A 1972 graduate of Louisiana Tech, Rick started his career in Mechanical Engineering at Monsanto Textiles. After 5 years in project/ design engineering there and 3 years with Diamond Shamrock, Rick moved from the chemical industry into refining. His 21 years of refinery experience in design engineering, reliability engineering, general troubleshooting, maintenance management, and capital project engineering/ management allow Rick to bring a mixed bag of tools to the table.

He has served as chairman of the American Petroleum Institute's Subcommittee on Pressure Vessels and Tanks, where he was part of the team that wrote the standard on Aboveground Storage Tank Inspection, Repair, Alteration, and Reconstruction (API Std 653). Rick later served as chairman of the API's Committee on Refinery Equipment, the parent committee for all the subcommittees that write and maintain API's equipment Standards and Recommended Practices for refineries. He continues to chair the API Inspector Certification Program Task Force (which encompasses tanks, pressure vessels, and piping) and works extensively with the related standards, recommended practices, and ASME Code.

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Reed is a graduate of the University of Tulsa with degrees in Chemical Engineering and Engineering Mathematics. Currently President and CEO of ThermaTran, Inc., he has over thirty years of proven experience in design of various types of heat transfer equipment, project management, production management, and various aspects of business development. Most of Reed's experience pertains to oil production, refinery and chemical plant related work, but over the years, he has gained extensive experience in computer applications of engineering design, metallurgy, corrosion, heat transfer, and fluid flow (both single and two-phase flow). Reed has a background in the design of Oil Refinery Heaters including: Crude Oil, Vacuum Crude, Hydrotreater, Hydrocracker, Heat Medium, Natural Gas Regen Gas, Ethylene Cracking, Delayed Coker Charge heaters, Naphtha Reformer Heaters (CCR Platformer), Reboilers, and Petrochemical applications (including Acetic Acid Cracking Heaters). His experience includes all phases of heater design - coil, burners, refractory, structure, tube support, burner management/ process control, etc. Additionally Reed has a background in the design and operation of process thermal oxidizers such as tail gas units, ECM wastes, BTX, and other applications. Reed has experience in both new units and unit modification to improve throughput and / or efficiency.

Through this experience, Reed has gained a sound understanding of the functions of most processing units and their relationship to each other and the whole refinery, natural gas plant, or chemical plant. He also has teaching experience with young engineers, having developed and presented several Incinerator / Fired Heater seminars.

Reed is well known and respected in the industry through his involvement in AIChE and having served on several API Committees for Heat Transfer Equipment.

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Roy received a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M and a Master's and PhD from Louisiana Tech. After seven years in the oil business, spanning Production, Construction, Maintenance, and Corrosion Engineering, he went to work for a major pressure vessel fabricator. Roy started as Assistant Chief Engineer, moved up to Chief Engineer, managed Research and Development for the firm, then finished as Director of New Product Development. In his twenty-nine years with the company, Roy became familiar with cryogenic storage vessels and design of welded components. He designed pressure vessels, developed computer programs to aid in design of ASME Code Pressure Vessels, and performed detailed stress analysis of vessels and piping. He is holder of two patents and contributed to the development of two others.

Roy left the fabrication company to begin consulting in 1986. He has gained a great deal of experience in failure analysis, metallurgical issues and finite element methods of stress analysis. He often serves as an expert witness in legal proceedings.

Roy is a Registered Professional Engineer in Louisiana and seven other states. His reputation as an expert in pressure vessel design and stress analysis is well known around the country, partly due to his work with three ASME Code committees and study groups for other organizations.

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After graduating from Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now University of Louisiana in Lafayette) in 1955 with a B.S. degree in chemistry, David entered the Air Force through the ROTC program; serving as a Photo Officer in a Reconnaissance Unit. He served two years (with honorable discharge), then entered the petroleum industry with ArkLa Gas Company in a routine control laboratory as a chemist. He was employed there over three years, and served a year as an Applications Chemist with Grant-Lehr Corporation, whose business was fabrication of exterior and interior wall panels coated with epoxy and polyester resins.

David next moved into a refinery operations control laboratory serving as a Chemist, Assistant Chief Chemist, Chief Chemist and Laboratory Manager with the Pennzoil Company. He often worked directly with the laboratory equipment, including different types of distillation equipment, gas chromatographs, viscosity apparatus, AA equipment and many other devices. During his twenty-eight year tenure there, overseeing the evaluation of feedstocks and control of the internal processing as well as the final approval of products for sale, David gained a significant appreciation for the various refinery processes and their interrelationships. His familiarity with these processes, combined with his laboratory know-how, gives David a unique perspective in tackling challenging problems - including the design of laboratories for processing plants.
He retired from Pennzoil in June of 1990 but continues his involvement in the refining industry as a consultant. Dave also remains active in the local section of the American Chemical Society, where he has served as secretary and president.

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