Newsletter – June 2026
The Chemical Consultant
Welcome to the June 2026 edition of our newsletter, The Chemical Consultant. At the Association of Chemical Consultants & Chemical Engineers, we are constantly reminded that our work extends far beyond the laboratory or the plant floor; it is defined by its profound impact on our world. From pioneering sustainable materials to optimizing life-saving processes, our members act as the vital bridge between complex molecular science and the global solutions society relies on. In this issue, we celebrate the innovations, expertise, and collaborative spirit that allow our community to shape a cleaner, safer, and more efficient future for all.
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What I might tell a novice consultant about becoming a successful one
By John Fetzer, Ph.D. President, ACC&CE
For high-level consulting In chemical engineering or chemistry, there are few resources or guidance. It “is a learn by doing” business, and often it is through making mistakes.
1. Be flexible and versatile! What you did within a “regular” job is not what you do. Clients look for current talent. and offer to a client. Stretch your boundaries! For example, I did a lot of liquid chromatography method development in my regular job before venturing into consulting. But as a consultant, I often assess a standard method for its strengths and weaknesses. Or I look at alternate versions that cost less to do or are done in less time, nothing scientific – just the economics of running a lab.
2. Protect yourself by being prudent and wary. Your work is “by the piece”, paid by the hour or by a set amount to get a work project done. Great recordkeeping is a must! A hard=nosed approach may be necessary. For example, if you’ve agreed to do expert-witness work, just by signing a contract, you give something substantial away. If you do that, you cannot be available for the opposing side, even if the one you signed with never has you do anything (a zero-dollar situation that some less-than-scrupulous attorneys use to elimination a strong expert from becoming their opposition. A common solution is to require a retention fee that often is credit for the first few billable hours of work (I charge a half-day for mine, substantial enough to keep attorneys honest).
3. Network like crazy!!!! Projects often are about something that the staff of a company cannot solve. Your strength is doing high-level specialized work, not doing what others can do. This is where a wide-ranging network of connections can be a boon. Keep your network vigilant and vigorous. (But be honest with yourself and whoever you feal with by only accepting projects that you have a good chance of doing well – your reputation is one of your most valuable assets.)
4. Keep up to date! Obsolescence is making yourself irrelevant. Read the literature to keep your knowledge ahead of both the staff of the companies who might need you and of the other consultants in your fields of expertise.
John Fetzer, Ph.D.,
Fetzpahs Consulting
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It Starts with a Spark: Arson Defense
David M. Manuta, Ph.D., FAIC, Chemical, Environmental, Products, Fire, and Explosion Expert
Reprinted with permission from Expertly Speaking Q12026
Case Summary: A residential fire resulted in a homeowner being charged with four counts of aggravated arson. Defense sought an expert to determine if an accidental cause for this basement fire could be found.
Expert Analysis: The local fire department and sheriff’s office conducted the initial investigation and determined the fire to be incendiary or started by the human hand. However, initial investigators did not follow the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standards 921 (Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations) or 1033 (Standard for Professional Qualifications for Fire Investigator). These protocols require developing and testing a hypothesis, and determining origin and cause based on the discovered facts.
During the expert’s site inspection, it was noted that a 1972 Chevrolet pick-up truck was parked in the basement garage. A family member advised that the truck had not been moved for several years. Some of the internal components of the truck, constructed from plastic and/or rubber, could have degraded in that time. Additionally, research based on the make and model of the truck indicated multiple potentially flammable fluids were present. Furthermore, the expert found a drain with moisture around it located beneath the truck.
While documenting the scene, the expert heard an audible actuator go off. The family member present explained that their water heater was spark actuated. They explained that all under-the-floor piping, including from the drain under the truck, came together near the water heater.
Dropping automotive fluids (fuels) entered the drain piping system, evaporated, and then diffused through the piping. In the presence of abundant oxygen, the fuel vapor could be ignited by the spark-actuated water heater when the fuel to oxygen ratio by volume was in the range between the lower flammability limit (LFL) and the upper flammability limit (UFL), at a temperature greater than the flash point (the minimum temperature in the presence of oxygen when combustion of the fuel vapor can occur).
When the expert examined the water heater’s vent pipe, soot was found inside. From this observation, an accidental cause of the fire was determined.
Result: The case against Defendant was dismissed upon disclosure of the expert’s report to the prosecutor.
Manuta Chemical Consulting, Inc.
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The synthesis of anabolic steroid metabolites
By Marvin B. DeTar. Ph.D.,
A client asked me to supply them with the metabolites of two anabolic steroids because of a Food and Drug Administration request. Some professionals familiar with steroid nomenclature know that there were at least four different systems used to name steroids into the 1950’s until a single nomenclature evolved over the last sixty years. The electronic record recovery system does not cover the earlier naming systems adequately.
I was familiar with the different steroid nomenclatures and how to perform a little used literature search tool. The original patents were found after a four hour search. It was decided that a newer method of synthesis would increase the yield of the metabolites, so it was performed. The method provided higher yields of both metabolites. Also the literature method was followed making the identical metabolites. After the two anabolic steroid metabolites were synthesized, each of the metabolites, the analytical proofs of purity, and the unequivocal structural determinations were transmitted to my client and to the FDA.
Since my client’s starting steroids possessed different crystal structures and different crystalline habits, the FDA needed to be provided a reproducible synthesis from steroids with the original crystal structures and to strictly follow the patent methods and compare both results my client shared with their results. This would complete a highly sought internal FDA project. The staff at the FDA accomplished all of the project goals six weeks later.
My client now possesses bona fide metabolites of the two anabolic steroids and the FDA possesses the identical steroid metabolites as well. The FDA is able to pursue a definitive analytical determination of these metabolites in retained samples of urine of athletes who are boosting their performance by using either of these anabolic steroids before and/or during athletic competitions.
Marvin B. DeTar, Ph.D.,
Molecular Technologies LTD
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Measure Twice, Cut Once: A Field Guide to Chemical Process Scale-Up
There’s an old saying among senior engineers: “There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it twice.” Nowhere is that more painfully true than in chemical process scale-up. What works beautifully in a 250-mL round-bottom can fail spectacularly in a 10,000-gallon reactor — and the difference between a profitable plant and a million-dollar paperweight often comes down to whether someone took piloting seriously.
Piloting means setting up a sequence of chemical engineering operations that mimic proposed commercial operations as closely as possible, but at a greatly reduced scale. It is not optional. I once watched a company commission a million-dollar carbon-block machine without a working pilot unit. The rubber compression bladders — which nobody had stress-tested at temperature — turned out to be excellent thermal insulators, preventing the powdered activated carbon/polymer mixture from ever solidifying properly. The machine ran for fifteen to thirty minutes at a stretch before breaking down. After six months, it was sold for scrap. A small, dismantlable pilot unit would have caught the heat-transfer issue in an afternoon.
Reactors first. Three reactor types dominate: the CSTR, the batch reactor, and the plug-flow (tubular) reactor. Each has its own kinetic personality, and the chemist who handed you a beaker of product likely didn’t characterize them. On one styrene-oxide unit — five tubular reactors in series — I developed the kinetics, modeled each stage, and discovered the temperature profile was running exactly backwards. Reversing it from increasing to decreasing dramatically improved efficiency. The lesson: build the kinetic model. Don’t trust the temperature profile somebody sketched on a napkin in 1987.
Then worry about mixing. Mass-transfer effects will eat your kinetic data alive if you let them. At one formulated-products plant, a viscous, dense raw material was taking hours to blend, despite glass-beaker tests showing rapid mixing. The culprit? Operators were adding the component at the tank edge — into the low-shear viscous-drag zone —instead of the high-intensity vortex at the center. Dense liquid pooled at the bottom and refused to incorporate. One change to the addition point and mixing times dropped through the floor. Match mass-transfer coefficients between scales, not just agitator RPM.
Be skeptical of partial pilot runs. The federal government once asked us to design a diene precursor unit. Pilot ran beautifully — six hours a day, due to manpower constraints. The commercial unit started up uneventfully, then a week in, plant engineers found an alarming buildup of yellow granular polymer in the product. It was a slow side reaction that simply never had time to manifest in our truncated pilot runs. If your commercial unit will run 24/5 or 24/7, your pilot needs to run long enough to surface the slow stuff.
Separations are where margins die. Distillation columns still can’t be fully predicted from thermal and physical properties alone — pilot data is non-negotiable, especially with novel packings. Crystallization is even less forgiving: a robust solid-state phase diagram, careful seeding strategy, and slow cooling rates are the difference between elegant crystals and a plugged heat exchanger. Filtration scale-up routinely uses safety factors of 1.5 to 2× because pleat geometry, hydraulic losses, and membrane lot variability conspire to wreck linear scaling.
Materials of construction are not an afterthought. Chlorides will stress-crack stainless. Hydrofluoric acid will eat glass. And a supplier’s casual “this minor formulation change will have no effect on your process” is, in my experience, a near-certain prelude to years of reformulation work. I lived through exactly that with a PES membrane — a small Bisphenol-A addition our supplier swore was inert turned every downstream filtration spec on its head. Qualify every change. Trust nothing.
The thread tying it all together is humility about what you don’t yet know. Glass pilot units let you see what’s happening. Long pilot runs surface slow problems. Direct measurement of mass-transfer coefficients beats geometric scale-up rules every time. And when R&D warns engineering that the heat-transfer surface is undersized by a factor of three — well, listen. The unit will still be undersized after it’s built, and it’ll cost twice as much to fix in steel as it would have in a redesign.
Scale-up rewards patience and punishes shortcuts. Measure twice. Pilot thoroughly.
Then cut.
Joel Shertok, Ph.D.
President – Process Industries Consultants, Inc
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A Message from the President:
By John Fetzer, Ph.D.:
The Coordinating Committee of the Consultancy Interest Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry (the United Kingdom) has started an initiative of outreach to our Association. The aim is to create a two-way bridge where consultants in the UK (there are about 1700 members) and ACC&CE, along with the only other consulting group in the US, The Chemical Consultants Network. CCN has about 50 members, while ACC&CE has about 25 (but there is some redundancy). The American Chemical Society has no consults division, group, or committee of any kind, so these two groups are the chosen conduits for the RSC group. The RSC group has obtained 1500 pounds from the Society to fund this effort. They have held one virtual meeting to introduce UIS consultant members of the group to the RSC group. 7 ACC&CE members and 1` CCN member attended. It is anticipated that further meeting and contacts between the 3 groups will become frequent in the second half of this year and will focus on a structure, its aims, and what needs to be done.
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The Association of Consulting Chemists & Chemical Engineers (ACC&CE)
is a network of senior-level consultants with a broad range of functional expertise and many years of experience in the chemical and allied industries.
The purposes of the organization are the following: To offer prospective clients a “clearing house” which they can use to find the most qualified consultants, whatever their particular problem may be as well as to furnish support to its members as they conduct their consulting practices.
This newsletter is intended to support those purposes as well as to educate prospective new members and prospective client organizations about ACC&CE, and how we can be most helpful to them.
The ACC&CE has an interactive website – chemconsult.org – that allows prospective clients to either input their problem to
submit a Consultant Help Inquiry (CHI) or else to search our membership for those consultants most skilled in their area of
concern. The LinkedIn Association page is also active now and available.
Thank you to these member consulting companies for sponsoring our newsletter:
