Interview with Henry Kister on Distillation Troubleshooting

Douglas B. Clark

Community Manager & Editor, ChEnected
AIChE

Douglas Clark is a copywriter and speechwriter with a healthy appetite for all things digital. He has more than 15 years' agency and independent experience in corporate and marketing communication, and his clients come from diverse industries, specializing in anything from financial products and toothpaste to software for the visualization of computational fluid dynamics data. Among his clients are Accenture, American Express, Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Hewlett-Packard, and Panasonic.

AIChE's Kristine Chin joined Henry Kister at the 2017 AIChE Spring Meeting in San Antonio to discuss his book, Distillation Troubleshooting. Henry earned the nickname "the tower doctor" because he developed a true expertise at diagnosing distillation tower issues over the years. 

In his video interview above, he talks about how he developed this expertise, a large part of which began by simply speaking to senior engineers who had a lot of knoweledge and experience to share. Throughout his time in the field, he also gathered plenty of his own experiences. These years of know-how are shared in his book, which he considers one of his greatest achievements and a way of helping other chemical engineers in their day-to-day work and throughout their careers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

Member for

3 days 8 hours
Member ID
000090187274
First Name
Akintunde
Last Name
Coker

Submitted by Akintunde Coker on Fri, 01/25/2019 - 19:22

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An excellent and brilliant mind who’s given much in distillation, diagnosis and troubleshooting of columns and their performance.

Member for

2 months 3 weeks
Member ID
009900121545
First Name
Ranjit
Last Name
Hirode

Submitted by Ranjit Hirode on Sun, 04/13/2025 - 04:17

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Tower Doctor Mr. Henry Kister an inspiration for the entire Distillation Fraternity across the globe. His books are a great source of knowledge on Distillation Column whether its design or troubleshooting. Excellent insights from the Tower Doctor on his journey and the importance of sharing the knowledge.