Megan Midkiff, B.S.

When Megan Midkiff began work as a chemical applications engineer for a geothermal power company, she was given a diagram depicting every twist and turn in piping and every valve in an entire plant. She was also given a challenge: figure out why the pipes keep corroding.

Midkiff had no training in geothermal energy. After graduating with a chemical engineering degree from Kansas State University, Midkiff spent 2 years stress testing nuclear weapons as a government contractor for Honeywell and then another 4 years working for a water treatment company.

But after studying the plant’s diagram for 6 months, Midkiff noticed that the pipes corroded in places where water flowed through at an especially high velocity. She advised her company to slow the flow by expanding the diameter of the piping in key places. Now 3 years later, there hasn’t been a corrosion issue since.

As the company’s lone chemical engineer for its more than two dozen power plants across the globe, Midkiff always has a new problem to tackle, from biofilm in cooling towers to mineral buildup in piping. A degree in chemical engineering teaches students to be problem solvers in whatever industry they enter, Midkiff says.

What motivated you to earn your undergraduate degree in chemical engineering?

I always enjoyed the rules of chemistry and math—that these disciplines can describe the world in a logical way. I also knew that I could take a multitude of avenues with that degree—food and beverage manufacturing, cosmetics, oil and gas. I liked that I didn’t have to decide when I was 18 years old exactly which field I’d enter. Though even then, I was interested in renewable energy and thought I might take that direction.

How did you find your first job out of college?

My school had a career fair. I met some representatives from Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (FM&T) who had a contract through the Department of Energy to test nuclear weapons components. They needed to ensure that the weapons would hold up for decades through flooding, earthquakes, and other stressors. I was intrigued by the challenge and also excited that the role would require me to get a top-secret security clearance. I ended up working with electrical engineers to create testing devices to simulate disturbances for individual components of the weapons. Ultimately, I moved on because I was looking to relocate to another part of the country.

What are your responsibilities now as a chemical applications engineer?

My company builds geothermal power plants all over the world—wherever there are natural hot-water sources. Our pipes reach into natural fractures in the Earth’s crust to pull up hot water. We run the water through a series of heat exchanges. The heat vaporizes a hydrocarbon that spins a turbine that powers a generator, which creates electricity. It’s a closed-loop system. We return the cooled water to the ground to be heated again. And the same hydrocarbon is cooled back to a liquid and then vaporized again and again. 

My main job is to prevent corrosion and mineral buildup. Corrosion eats away at the pipes. Mineral buildup, which we call scale, reduces heat-exchange efficiency, so we can’t make as much energy. Plants in different locations have unique problems because the water is interacting with particular rocks under the Earth's crust. Some plants have water with high silica content, for example. Others have high calcite content. Some contain a lot of gases. I also have to fight off biofilm buildup in our cooling towers.

What tools do you use to keep the pipes running smoothly?

I have teams that test the water for gas content, mineral content, pH, and other factors and send data back to me. We also monitor for corrosion. And I regularly visit plants myself in Hawaii, Guatemala, Kenya, and other sites across the world. Sometimes I have to ask the plant to shut down briefly so that I can take down a pipe and inspect it. Oftentimes there is a chemical fix for problems. We use a lot of scale and corrosion inhibitors. But sometimes the issue is mechanical, like the case where the water’s velocity was too great.

Whatever the solution, it has to be economical. You can throw in all the chemicals in the world, and you will never have scale or corrosion. But you will spend lots of money on that chemical. For example, we used to keep a constant level of bleach in the cooling towers in our Imperial Valley, California, plants to fight off biofilm. I discovered that we could achieve the same result by instead shocking the towers with bleach periodically. That fix saves us $300,000 in bleach expenses every year!

Where do you see your career taking you from here?

I’m really specialized now, so I don’t see myself switching fields. Geothermal is niche, and geothermal water treatment is even more niche. There are probably less than 10 people in the world who do what I do. But even in my current role, there are always new challenges. Our geologists regularly find new places to build plants, and with each new plant come unique problems for me to solve.

It's very satisfying knowing that I’m helping the environment by expanding access to renewable energy. As I've grown in my career, I've learned that feeling good about what I contribute to the world for 40 hours each week is very important to me.

This profile has been edited for length and clarity. The opinions expressed in this interview are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the view of their employer or the American Chemical Society.