Recovering Halon 1301

The goal was easy to put into numbers: take recovered Halon 1301 from 96% to 99.7% purity. Through the Harvey Mudd Engineering Clinic, I worked with a team of fellow undergraduate engineers to design, simulate, and specify a miniature distillation column to do it.

For our partner, Ametek Ameron, the system was intended to reduce reliance on an external distributor while meeting the required purity. We needed a design that made sense for that recovery operation.

Applying chemical engineering

This was a chance to take separation-process design out of a classroom problem and work through it for an industry partner. The simulations and equipment specifications had to serve a specific goal: getting the recovered material to the purity needed for reuse.

I also worked with Ametek on renovating a manufacturing line through the Riggs Fellowship for Engineering Management. My other clinic project involved solar minigrid reliability—a very different application of the same general engineering training.