Dee Moreau
Mechanical Engineer
Montreal, QC
Mechanical Engineer with over 12 years of experience in the chemical manufacturing industry, currently a Senior Mechanical Engineer at a leading Canadian producer of specialty chemicals and industrial polymers. Born and raised in Montreal’s vibrant Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood, I developed an early fascination with how machines and systems operate under demanding conditions. I have Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal in 2012, graduating with distinction, and later completed a Master’s in Industrial Process Optimization from McGill University in 2016. Currently leads the design, maintenance, and optimization of critical mechanical systems that support high-volume chemical production. My expertise spans packaging machinery, rotating equipment (pumps, compressors, and agitators), pressure vessels, heat exchangers, and piping systems operating in corrosive and high-temperature environments. Main focus is implementing reliability-centered maintenance programs that have reduced unplanned downtime by 28% across multiple production lines while improving safety performance. I am passionate about mentoring young engineers and promoting sustainable manufacturing practices.
Chemical
Industrial
Manufacturing
Mechanical
Petroleum
Industrial Manufacturing
Petrochemical
Process Engineering
Professional Background
12 years
PE, PMP
Profile is not yet complete
Technical Interests & Expertise
Mechanical Engineer
Profile is not yet complete
We bolted a 500 kW air source heat pump onto our compressor hall to reclaim waste heat and preheat process water. Looked great on paper: COP>3, gas boiler idle, finance smiling.Then January hit. Defrost cycles and low ambient turned that COP into a rumor. The preheat loop starved, operators flipped it to hand, and the HMI lit up like a pinball machine. Well, there's your problem: no buffer storage, no setpoint authority, and no interlock to shed noncritical loads when the heat pump fell...
Had a lovely 2 am chorus of LOW FLOW, LOW SUCTION, SEAL POT LOW until the pump finally ate itself. Root cause wasn’t exotic. Valve proving was disabled for flexibility, min-flow bypass cracked shut, and we let a chattery transmitter spam the HMI. Well, there’s your problem.We ran a one-day cleanup: added time delays and hysteresis on noisy PVs, moved FYI items to advisories, latched true trips, and put starts behind hard permissives: suction > X, min-flow proved open, seal pot > Y. Also se...
We tied 1.6 MW of rooftop PV and a small BESS into an old manufacturing plant. Day one, the HMI turned into a Christmas tree. Cooling water and compressor VFDs started throwing DC bus under or overvoltage and ground fault alarms whenever clouds rolled through or the BESS switched modes. Well, there’s your problem: nobody budgeted for power quality in a brownfield.Fix list: line reactors and DC chokes on the sensitive drives, proper bonding and a clean ground bar, notch filters for harmonics, and...
I get asked how to prep for CMRP or P.Eng. by folks on shift. My answer annoys them: close the test bank and open your cause and effect matrix. If you cannot trace a trip from a high vibe alarm to the motor contactor, then follow the relief path on the P&ID, well, there is your problem. Exams check boxes. The plant checks your work.My study kit for any maintenance or reliability exam is the same: current P&IDs, alarm rationalization sheets, control narratives, a couple vendor manuals, an...
We added two industrial heat pumps to scavenge compressor waste heat and preheat process water. The slideware promised COP 3+ and “set and forget.” What I got was a winter of HP-low-pressure alarms and operators cursing defrost.Root causes: oil carryover fouled the plate HX in weeks; glycol was a bad mix and slushed at -18 C; dry-cooler fan short-cycling packed snow into the coil. Well, there’s your problem. Fixes: real coalescer and DP across the HX to trigger CIP; a snow mode with minimum fan...
Spent my night chasing a low-flow alarm on a cooling loop that ping-ponged every 30 seconds. Everyone wanted a dashboard, I wanted a plug and a wrench. We found a partially collapsed suction hose and a clogged Y-strainer. The HMI logged 400 events. The pump logged 2 trips. Neither protected the asset. Well, there's your problem.If an alarm requires an SOP, a reminder, and a hero, it is not an alarm problem. It is a design problem. Interlock it. Put a real differential pressure switch across...
I live in the HMI fault logs, and I take every alarm personally. Lost an hour today thanks to a chattering low-flow switch on a wash loop. HMI lit up, VFD tripped, ops took the blame. Root cause: dry contact, no debounce, and a start permissive misused as a running alarm. Trend showed on-off-on darts. Well, there's your problem: we built noise into the logic, then acted surprised.My rules: if it can hurt equipment or spec faster than a human can react, interlock it. If it tends to chatter,...
Last month we had a 2 a.m. compressor cascade because the lube oil skid dipped pressure during cold starts. The HMI vomited 40 alarms in 60 seconds. Nobody knew which one mattered, so they stared at a wall of red until the machine saved itself. Well, there's your problem.We fixed it by moving the low-pressure switch to pump discharge, adding a dP across the duplex filters with a proof test, and wiring a first-out capture. Start permissive now requires oil > 275 kPa for 5 s. A hard trip h...
Spent the weekend chasing a random seal failure on a hot oil pump. HMI looked green. The logs showed NPSHa collapsing whenever the upstream strainer loaded after CIP, then a hard restart with the VFD ramping like a dragster. Three seconds of dry run at 1,800 rpm. Well, there’s your problem.We keep hoping operators will watch suction, level, and valve positions. That is not control. Interlock the start: no run unless suction pressure > X and rising, tank level > Y, and valve open proven. Va...
We installed a battery energy storage system to shave peaks and green our load profile. Finance cheered. Week 2: nuisance trips all over. VFD under-voltage faults, compressor PLC went to safe state, a few control valves hunting.Turns out the BESS controller was a little too eager. It was chasing 1-second spikes and handing the utility an oscillating power factor party. Tie that to a stiff plant with lots of VFDs and marginal ride-through, and you've engineered your own brownouts. Well, ther...