Chemical Engineer

About Sirona Technologies

At Sirona Technologies, we are developing direct air capture (DAC) technology to remove CO2 from the air and combat climate change. As a startup in the scale up phase, we are focused on learning from existing production systems to inform new experiments in the lab that lead to improvements in our next production systems. And doing so as quickly as possible to reduce costs as quickly as possible.

We're looking for a talented and mission-driven chemical engineer to join our Sorbent team. You will play an essential role in understanding and improving the performance of our DAC process, bridging fundamental research, laboratory experimentation, and the performance of our production systems.

Responsibilities

As a chemical engineer, you will:

• Design, build, adapt and operate experimental setups to answer fundamental questions about our DAC process, working with engineers across disciplines on rigs, prototype systems, instrumentation and data acquisition.
• Design and execute reliable experiments to investigate the impact of key process parameters, such as relative humidity, temperature, and regeneration conditions.
• Develop a deep understanding of the mass transfer, heat transfer, fluid dynamics and reaction phenomena governing our DAC process, using modeling to speed up sorbent characterisation.
• Analyze sensor data from lab-scale setups to the large-scale machines to understand performance and guide the development of new sorbents and process conditions.
• Contribute to the design of our next-generation DAC systems by bringing together experimental evidence, physical understanding and engineering judgement.
• Communicate with chemical suppliers to identify future tracks in the development of the sorbents.

Requirements

• Masters or PhD in Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or a related field.
• 2+ years of professional experience, or PhD-level research experience, in chemical engineering or a closely related field.
• Experience working on carbon capture, adsorption, gas separation or a related field; Experience with solid-based adsorption processes is a strong plus
• Strong interest in hands-on experimental work: you enjoy building things, setting up experiments, troubleshooting equipment and getting your hands dirty in the lab.
• Strong data analysis and quantitative reasoning skills, with the ability to distinguish meaningful physical effects from experimental noise.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a pragmatic approach to experimental challenges.
• Strong English verbal and written communication skills.
• Smart but humble, with a bias for action.

Nice to haves

• Experience with data acquisition and analysis, including Python or similar tools.
• Experience with process simulation or modeling for adsorption systems (e.g. Matlab, Aspen, COMSOL, or similar).

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