Adsorption Performance Engineer

at  TerraFixing Inc

Position: Adsorption Performance Engineer
Compensation: $72,400 - $86,200 (and eligibility for Stock Options)
Reports to: Chief Technology Officer
Employment Type: Full Time
Location: Ottawa ON, Canada
About us
Are you looking to invest your skills in pioneering and growing a climate organization with long term impact? This is an opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with our founders. TerraFixing is a Canadian leader in direct air carbon capture (DAC) technology that is backed by the government and industry. Having recently closed a SEED round, secured over $2.6M in grant funding (NRCan (https://natural-resources.canada.ca/home), SDTC (https://www.sdtc.ca/en/) etc), and signed a $10M commercial agreement (https://obj.ca/terrafixing-gets-1-6m-to-capture-co2-in-canadas-north/), we are at a pivotal point of growth. Our mission is to scale and deploy our novel cold climate DAC technology to clean our atmosphere from humanity’s legacy CO2 emissions and accelerate global decarbonization. The foundation of any successful mission into a new frontier is always the team members. This is your opportunity to join a rapidly growing and impactful company that has solid long term plans and a great company culture.
Curious about what we’ve been up to? Check out our latest news (https://www.terrafixing.com/news)!
Purpose of the role
As an Adsorption Performance Engineer, you will be designing, developing and testing novel sorbents for carbon capture applications. The role requires a deep understanding of fundamental adsorption principles and temperature swing, pressure swing and temperature-vacuum swing adsorption.
Currently, TerraFixing has demonstrated a small-scale novel gas separation & purification process and system for direct air capture of carbon dioxide using novel adsorbent materials. We are now scaling up the technology and preparing for a demonstration project. As an Adsorption Performance Engineer, you will be designing, analyzing and optimizing our direct air capture materials and process to improve efficiency and minimize energy requirements. We face interesting engineering challenges due to novel designs & involved processes and thus, this role is ideal for someone who thrives on solving complex engineering challenges in a groundbreaking field. Overcoming these complex challenges will require someone who is comfortable tackling open ended problems, who loves to learn, and who challenges the status-quo.

Preferred Experience/Qualifications

• Post graduate degree in Chemical Engineering (or equivalent) with a focus on adsorption.
• 5+ years of experience in adsorbent research and development.
• Experience operating and maintaining sorbent characterization equipment such as gravimetric/volumetric isotherm analyzers, particle size analyzers, pore size and pore size distribution analyzers.
• Experience designing, operating, and optimizing temperature-swing and pressure-swing adsorption processes.
• Expertise in the design of experiments(DOE), conducting experiments, data analysis and reporting .
• Team-oriented individual who is a capable problem-solver, with strong coordination skills, and understands conflict resolution.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Demonstrated flexibility and ability to adapt to change in a fast-paced environment.
• A strong sense of accountability and a desire to continually improve oneself

• Operate and maintain advanced sorbent characterization equipment (e.g., particle size analyzers, gravimetric/volumetric isotherm analyzer, breakthrough equipment) and develop, document, and update standard operating procedures for these tools.
• Apply scientific and engineering methodologies, including DOE, to design and execute experiments, optimize carbon capture processes, and perform sensitivity and optimization studies resulting in robust lab testing methodologies.
• Build and operate process simulation models on industry standard simulation software.
• Troubleshoot and resolve equipment and process related challenges
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to achieve key performance indicators (e.g., carbon capture fraction, pressure drop, mass transfer rates)
• Document reports of research and development activities undertaken for fast reference and use in the future.
• Participate in HazOps, FMEA and Risk assessment.
• Participate in and support the general day-to-day tasks and activities required in a start-up.
• Design, build, test and optimize large carbon capture prototypes

Preferred Experience/Qualifications

• Post graduate degree in Chemical Engineering (or equivalent) with a focus on adsorption.
• 5+ years of experience in adsorbent research and development.
• Experience operating and maintaining sorbent characterization equipment such as gravimetric/volumetric isotherm analyzers, particle size analyzers, pore size and pore size distribution analyzers.
• Experience designing, operating, and optimizing temperature-swing and pressure-swing adsorption processes.
• Expertise in the design of experiments(DOE), conducting experiments, data analysis and reporting .
• Team-oriented individual who is a capable problem-solver, with strong coordination skills, and understands conflict resolution.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Demonstrated flexibility and ability to adapt to change in a fast-paced environment.
• A strong sense of accountability and a desire to continually improve oneself.