Our Leadership

​Georges Mendakis, Owner and Founder

Born in 1961, Georges benefited from a British education early in his life at St. Paul’s School in his native Sao Paulo, Brazil. He found his love for chemistry while attending Oundle School in Northamptonshire, UK, where he embraced the culture of hands-on engineering via workshops and experimentation.

Problem-solving via pilot-plant work and medium-scale batch operation attracted Georges to the University of Birmingham, UK, where he achieved a BSc in Chemical Engineering and an MSc in Biochemical Engineering.

Returning to Brazil, Georges joined Shell Chemical’s agrochemical business. He remained with Shell Chemical until his first exposure to alumina processing in 1986, when he took a project engineer position building an alumina plant for a Greek-Russian consortium.

Georges has worked in the catalyst / absorbent technology field for nearly 30 years.

1988-1995: Technical Sales Manager, ICI Katalco (Billingham, UK) for Europe, Africa and Middle East Focused on collecting plant data and monitoring/optimizing performance of catalyst trains in ethylene, hydrogen and ammonia plants. Grappled with the following issues:

• Green oil formation over alumina-supported C2 selective hydrogenation catalyst
• Effectiveness of S species in contamination of steam reforming, CO shift and methanation catalysts in hydrogen and ammonia plants
• Effectiveness of Cl species in contamination of CO shift and methanation catalysts in hydrogen and ammonia plants
• Early die-off cause in ZnO beds by Cl species
• Effectiveness of base metal promoters used to suppress acid function of alumina supports, minimizing green oil and boudouard carbon formation
• Catalyst performance monitoring during real plant operation was at the core of Georges’ work at ICI. He adopted and promoted this approach in subsequent work.

1995-2004: Business Development Manager, Eurecat US Inc. Focused on hydrotreating, hydroprocessing and isomerization/reforming in oil refineries.

• Spent catalyst regeneration uniquely looks at the cycle of a spent batch. The objective was to identify contaminants and process conditions causing early die off (EDF).
• Familiarity was gained in the role played by contaminants in catalyst deactivation and EDF.

2004: Founder, CLS Industrial Purification, LLC 

• Designs gas and liquid treaters for all major oil companies. Created a custom-made system that serves as a technology asset and includes:
• Designing the vessels
• Working with engineers to monitor the product
• Visiting sites and conducting testing
• Developing procedures and recipes for unloading spent material