Dave Ramirez
Senior Mechanical Engineer
Houston, TX
Over a decade of experience as a Senior Mechanical Engineer at a major independent oil and gas exploration and production company. A proud Houston native raised in the Energy Corridor, grew up surrounded by the city’s booming energy sector. Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2009 and later obtained Professional Engineer (P.E.) license in Texas. Responsible for the design, reliability, and integrity of critical mechanical equipment across offshore platforms, onshore production facilities, and pipeline compressor stations. Expertise includes rotating equipment (pumps, compressors, and gas turbines), pressure vessels, heat exchangers, and piping systems operating in high-pressure, high-temperature, and sour service environments. Focusing on failure analysis investigations, implements predictive maintenance programs using vibration analysis and condition monitoring, and drives reliability improvements that have reduced unplanned downtime by 25% over the past three years. Well-versed in API, ASME, and ISO standards and play a key role in capital projects, facility upgrades, and root cause analyses following major equipment incidents. Known for my practical, field-oriented approach and my ability to collaborate effectively with operations, drilling, and HSE teams in fast-paced environments. An active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
Mechanical
Oil and Gas
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Professional Background
15 years
P.E.
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Technical Interests & Expertise
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Our amine contactor only foams when the upstream separator burps condensate. Then it’s the same song: someone dumps antifoam, leans the amine, flooding jumps trays, H2S slip bounces, reboiler duty ticks up. Next day the filters are glazed with silicone and the carbon bed is useless. Root cause is hydrocarbon carryover and heat-stable salts, not “not enough antifoam.”What helped here: we tightened boot level control on the inlet 3-phase, put a cheap DP tap across the top two trays wired to a buzz...
3D printing has been a good triage tool for us, but only in the right lanes. I use it for jigs, sensor guards, cable clamps, purge blocks, and patterns. It keeps the line running while the real part ships. Anything pressure rated or in sour service stays off the printer unless a code path exists.Hard lesson on polymers and hot hydrocarbons: SLS PA12 crept and swelled around 80 C in light oil. CF-nylon lasted longer, then relaxed. We ended up machining PEEK. On metal AM, an Inconel 625 bracket wo...
Seeing a lot of folks chasing alphabet soup. In our plants, the letters that paid rent were PE for the gate and API 570/510 for real calls. NACE CIP helped me stop a bad coating spec before a shutdown went sideways. Fancy cloud badges never got a flange to seal.Prep that worked for me: for the PE CBT, live in the NCEES handbook. Build your own index and learn the search quirks. Drill unit checks until your hands do it without thinking. For API, it is code navigation. B31.3, Section VIII, API 571...
In our condensate stabilizer train, every time ops bumped the demulsifier, our E-205 shell-and-tube went from clean to molasses in a week. We chased velocity, baffle leakage, metallurgy, even blamed crude blend. Turned out the fix was polymerizing in hot zones and plating the tubes.We rigged a cheap side-stream with a 40 µm strainer and a beaker-on-a-hot-plate test at process film temps to see if the dose browned. Moved the injection lance downstream of the hot bundle, cut rate 30%, and used DP...
I'm the mech guy babysitting an MDEA sweetening unit that foams at the worst times. When contactor DP climbs and the regenerator level chatters, our compressors start singing. Vendor wants to sell a cloud-tuned antifoam skid. I’d rather keep control in the rack room.What’s worked: clamp hydrocarbon slip, swap carbon when lean color darkens, drain coalescers daily, and a very low continuous antifoam trickle through a rotameter. I use hot-lean shaker-bottle tests and tie dose to contactor DP...