Lilac Solutions is a clean-tech start-up developing ion exchange (IX) technology for direct lithium extraction from a diverse variety of brines. This technology uses IX "beads" which absorb the lithium from the brine. I spent 2 years on the Bead Technology team, responsible for scaling up bead production from the pilot line in our Oakland, CA warehouse to a small commercial-scale chemical plant in Reno, NV. This plant will be the first of its kind, as the bead formulation is proprietary to Lilac and never been done before at these scales.

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Team

While I was at Lilac, the Bead Technology team was about 15-20 people​, split into an R&ID arm improving and further understanding the bead formulation and chemistry, and a manufacturing arm subdivided into the "zones" of the process. I worked on the Zone 2/3 team, but also helped out with projects across bead team as a whole.

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The Zone 2/3 team was comprised of 2 early-career mechanical engineers (including me) and 2 mid-career process engineers, as well as 2 technicians running the pilot line.

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The Lilac Bead Team contracted out much of the detailed design work for the small commercial plant to an EPCM, with whom we worked closely. This was a great opportunity for me to see how designers and PEs put together and stamp design documents for plant construction.

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I greatly enjoyed my time at Lilac, in large part due to the people. My colleagues were all exceptionally competent, creative and collaborative, and we all worked to have our successes lift each other up and better the project as a whole. We worked hard while at work, but respected each other's lives outside of work and the need for work-life balance and vacations to maintain a sustainable work environment.

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Projects

​What I love about working at a start-up is the opportunity to learn so many new things and wear numerous hats as part of my position. Here are some of the projects and tasks I led, and others I helped support:

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Led

• Experiments to validate or disprove scale-up technologies. The pilot plant used manually intensive processes that did not lend well to scale-up, hence the need to explore new technologies. This exploration involved:

  • Identifying, borrowing, renting, or purchasing equipment. This was often done by our team's process engineers, then passed to me for the subsequent steps:

  • Designing the experiments and determining safety concerns and measures to protect against those concerns. After I wrote the procedure, the safety considerations would be reviewed by other Z2/3 team members, and parties across the greater bead team, to ensure that everything had been considered.

  • Running the experiments using material from the pilot line! This was often a 2-3 person team effort.

  • Analyzing data and determining what new experiments needed to be run or re-run. I would be the engineer spearheading this analysis, then sending to my colleagues for review and advice.

  • Ultimately deciding, as a team, whether the technology would be a good fit for our process.

• Procurement of equipment for the small commercial plant​:

  • Exploring different vendors, either via Googling or leveraging existing connections, and reaching out via phone, email, or webpage.

  • Sizing the equipment appropriately for our process scale, and collaborating with our new vendor partners to determine what options for the equipment would be best.

  • Purchasing the best value equipment with the aid of our team project manager.

• Creation of the IFC mechanical package for the small commercial plant. This required careful bookkeeping of all the selected equipment and specialty items. I compiled cut sheets and equipment lists into a comprehensive PDF describing all equipment in Zones 2/3. Although this was a team effort with our EPCM, I personally was responsible for creating the final package.​

• Mechanical design of plant details, some examples following. This involved using brainstorming possible solutions, then using Autodesk Inventor to CAD designs and create engineering drawings for fabrication, and finally sending them through the design review process with my mechanical engineering manager and other colleagues. In some cases it also involved ordering possible materials from McMaster to test their effectiveness.

  • Custom solids material flow connections between equipment

  • Dip tubes and adapters into process tanks

  • Operator aids for making manual processes more efficient

• Improvement projects for existing pilot plant, including:

  • Construction of additional units of a particular process step to increase throughput when demand increased. This involved communicating with the original unit's creators to understand the design, improving limited documentation of the original unit to develop a BOM, improving construction details, salvaging old projects to re-use materials, collaborating with an external machine shop for welding, and updating the SOPs.

  • Improvements to process cleanliness and material management

  • Installation of new PVC piping and ducting on process vessels

  • Support on numerous other projects for which I was not the leader

• Documentation of the evolution of the Zone 2/3 NAVIS model with our EPCM. Our team met with the piping lead and key designers of the EPCM weekly to discuss progress of the highly complex Zone 2 NAVIS model for the small commercial plant. I maintained an ever-growing word document detailing desired changes to the model as they came up in the meetings - from valve placements for best operator access, to the latest Tetris of equipment to fit everything in the fire-code limited process enclosure. This document was vital for ensuring that no small detail was missed, for facilitating smooth Lilac-EPCM conversation, and for refreshing our memories on justifications for design decisions of months past.

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Supported​

• Review of IFA documentation from our EPCM, including:

  • P&IDs

  • Piping ISOs

  • Structural steel and concrete drawings

  • ​Mechanical equipment lists

• Consistency between P&IDs, equipment and specialty items lists, and 3D models during collaboration with EPCM

• Mechanical drawing design reviews, reviewing teammates' designs for effectiveness, ease of fabrication, drawing clarity, and adherence to team engineering drawing standards. This greatly improved my familiarity with weld symbols and GD&T.

• Code compliance: understanding and applying fire code, reviewing the air permit created by my colleagues, and engaging in discussions on challenges that arose regarding seismic regulations.

• HAZOP and LOPA of Zones 2 and 3 of the small commercial plant.

• R&D experiments for new bead formulations at the lab and pilot scales. Although I did not design these experiments (as I did with the commercial scale-up equipment experiments), I ran procedures written by the R&D team and learned to work with a variety of lab equipment, and got an exciting glimpse of bead chemistry.

• Whatever other crazy variety of tasks needed doing! As is life at a start-up.

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Tools

(a non-exhaustive list)

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Software

• AutoCAD

  • 2D CAD of P&IDs prior to EPCM adopting scope

  • Plans for big-picture zone location on Fernley property​ for small commercial plant

• Autodesk Inventor

  • 3D CAD, extensively used to design parts and assemblies​

  • Use of sheet metal design for numerous sheet metal parts

• Bluebeam Revu

  • PDF editing and annotating, compilation of mechanical package

  • Collaboration with EPCM, especially for P&IDs and IFA package review​s

• G Suite​​

  • ​Used in the early start-up days before the switch to Microsoft. We all missed Google's superior search function when we switched.​

• Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint

  • Excel used extensively for data analysis and plotting, as well as for equipment lists and general organization​

  • I am shamelessly fond of making diagrams in PowerPoint

• Microsoft Teams, Outlook

• Newforma

  • Document transfer with EPCM

• Python

  • That one time Excel wasn't making a 3D plot the way I wanted to I found some numpy code on GitHub that would. My role at Lilac involved very little coding but I have the skills to do more in a future role.​

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Lab

• Rheometer

• Particle sizers: Bettersizer, Anton Parr

• Moisture analyzer

• Thermocouples, IR thermometers

• Mass balance

• Fume and powder hoods

• Powder splitters for representative sample collection

• Micropipettes and other liquid measuring tools

• Full face respirator: I was medically cleared and fit tested to use a full face respirator

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Prototyping and Fabrication

• 80-20, Unistrut assembly

• Hand tools: Allen and socket wrenches, screwdrivers, torque wrenches, rivet nut installation, etc.

• Power tools: power drill, impact driver, Portaband, etc.

• PVC pipe priming and gluing, threaded pipe assembly

• Silicone caulk

• Design for welding, plasma cutting, milling, lathing (performed by machinists)

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