The Becht Team
Louis Pasnik
Louis Pasnik has over 25 years of experience as a thermal and mechanical engineer with specific emphasis on heat exchangers, furnaces, and combustion equipment. His experience includes thirteen years as a practical plant based “boots-on-the-ground” heat transfer engineer for an owner/operator supporting multiple plants. He has experience in technically assuring heat transfer equipment configuration and design on large and small capital projects both as an EPC and as an owner/operator.
Prior to joining Becht, Mr. Pasnik served as a senior fired/unfired heat transfer equipment engineer for Shell. He led the fired equipment asset integrity strategy program at an integrated refinery and chemical plant, tying together multi-disciplinary elements related to operation, process safety and safeguarding, training operators, monitoring of KPIs, controls and instrumentation, mechanical integrity, and inspection strategies for all components of fired equipment with a focus on the program sustainability. He is passionate about developing and implementing furnace SIS and combustion control strategies, ensuring robust light off procedures, and sustainable inspection and repair planning.
Mr. Pasnik has substantial practical field experience with troubleshooting thermal/hydraulic and mechanical issues of combustion equipment, unfired and electric heat exchangers. As an owner/operator’s engineer he has gotten his hands dirty in many turnarounds across four Gulf Coast facilities and has overseen more than 30 furnace smart-pigging tubular inspections. Prior to joining Becht, he served 5 years as the worldwide refractory SME for furnaces and Sulfur Recovery Units for Shell.
He has studied and resolved more than 30 heat exchanger problematic body flanges and has avoided many more by directly resolving those having a “high risk” potential early in the engineering contractor’s design phase. Mr. Pasnik is proficient in the thermal and hydraulic design and rating of heat exchangers. He also specializes in sealing of heater plug return bends and air-cooled exchanger plugs.
Mr. Pasnik has conducted instructional courses on safe operation of fired equipment and unfired heat transfer equipment aspects to end user operations and engineering staff. He is currently the vice chair of API 660 (Shell & Tube Exchangers). He is proficient in thermal and mechanical rating software such as HTRI, FRNC-5, Compress, etc., and has been using these tools for more than two decades. In his current role in Becht’s Applied Mechanics team, Mr. Pasnik is gaining experience with Abaqus and Ansys/Fluent simulations and marrying these tools with his practical field knowledge.
Mr. Pasnik holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Texas A&M University.
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Maureen Brody
Hearl Mead, Jr
