Process Engineer

WHO WE ARE

Kunin Technologies is revolutionizing the critical mineral supply chain by implementing advanced separation technologies to capture value from overlooked resources.

Metals are everywhere, in solar panels, smartphones, electric vehicles, but as ore grades plummet globally, traditional extraction methods are failing. China dominates critical minerals markets by developing superior separation technologies that extract value from materials American mines discard as waste.

Utilizing Kunin Technologies' breakthrough performance, ion-exchange media significantly more value can be produced from each resource, reducing waste, and unlocking metal abundance.

To achieve metal abundance, humanity must bring separation science down its own Moore’s Law: fix the idiot cost index for micro and nano scale separation materials. This requires mass manufacturing novel ion-exchange media form factors which previously struggled from high costs.

THE ROLE

Group 14 metals (germanium, tin, silicon) are critical materials of the data center build-out, and Kunin is designing, guaranteeing and commissioning a group 14 metal chlorination plant overseas for an industrial partner: metal-bearing feeds from the partner's own process are converted by chlorination, purification and hydrolysis to an electronic-grade metal product, with Kunin's proprietary ion-exchange media recovering the metal from the dilute process liquors. Bench and mini-pilot process development runs in Chattanooga from December 2026 to May 2027, basic engineering issues in May 2027, the plant is built from modular skids in parallel with civil works, and commercial operation is targeted for the first quarter of 2028. The plant is built and operated by our partner; Kunin owns the process, the design package, the performance guarantee and the training of the operating team.

You are the process engineer who turns the bench and mini-pilot results into the plant. In the first six months you scale the mini-pilot data from both process development programs into the design basis, then you own the basic engineering package under the VP of Engineering: process flow diagrams, heat and material balances, process datasheets for every equipment item, materials-of-construction selection for HCl, chlorine and metal chloride service, the control philosophy, HAZOP preparation, and the utility and effluent summaries that the partner-country contractor and skid fabricator build from. Through detailed engineering you review the contractor's P&IDs and datasheets against process intent, evaluate vendor bids for the process-critical equipment and witness factory acceptance tests. At commissioning you are on site with the commissioning lead.

You work with the Lead Process Engineer, the distillation process engineer, the mechanical process engineer and the process chemists in Chattanooga, and with the VP of Capital Projects on schedule and cost. This is the first of a series of Kunin-designed metal recovery and conversion plants. You are a founding member of Kunin's Capital Projects team, whose goal is 100 critical metal projects in 10 years. Once this plant is through its gates you are expected to be executing design and delivery work on two to three projects in parallel.