Kenneth Agee, President

 

Mr. Agee has a degree in chemical engineering from Oklahoma State University.  His background is in crude oil refining and natural gas processing.  In 1984 he formed Syntroleum Corporation a publicly traded company that did extensive GTL development between 1990 and 2005.  Mr. Agee was responsible for much of the process and catalyst development at Syntroleum.  In 2008 Mr. Agee formed Emerging Fuels Technology and focused on novel fixed bed Fischer-Tropsch systems to enable small-scale projects.  He is listed on 11 issued U.S. patents and 12 pending patents.

 

Dr. Kym Arcuri, Vice President – Engineering

 

Dr. Arcuri has over 20 years of experience in Fischer-Tropsch technology in his positions at Exxon, Syntroleum, and as an independent consultant.  He has considerable experience in applying laboratory performance data into larger scale operations, having been responsible for the design and operation of the first Exxon slurry demonstration.  While at Syntroleum, Dr Arcuri designed the slurry pilot plant and as Technical Director, was responsible for the integration of all laboratory, pilot plant and demonstration unit data into their commercial scale-up design.  At EFT, Dr. Arcuri has worked to integrate lab and pilot data with reactor and process models to provide a basis for scale-up and engineering design for commercial FT systems.  Dr. Arcuri has 26 published patents and numerous refereed papers in the areas of reactor chemistry associated with highly exothermic reactions.

 

Dr. Rafael Espinoza, Vice President – Technology

 

Dr. Espinoza has been involved in the field of gas-to-liquids for over 30 years. At the CSIR in Pretoria, he was Chief Engineer and worked in the development of acid and transition metal catalysis, including Fischer-Tropsch. At Sasol, he was the head of the three Fischer-Tropsch Process Development Sections, Manager of Fischer-Tropsch Catalysts and Sasol Research Fellow. He was involved in all aspects of FT technology from lab scale to commercial scale over a fifteen year period, including the coordination for the development of Sasol’s Slurry Bed Reactor.  He was director of Fischer-Tropsch R&D at ConocoPhillips (2000 – 2005) and responsible for the technical development of their Fischer-Tropsch and Hydroprocessing technologies including catalyst development and preparation scale-up, modeling, process development, reactor technology and product handling. After 2005 he consulted for different US, European and Asian companies in the field of Fischer-Tropsch.  He has numerous refereed papers and 55 granted US patents in the field of synthetic fuels.  He is an Emeritus Professor at the National University of Engineering at Lima, Peru.