If there’s one thing that Jeremy Bartels, PhD, has learned in his years as an industrial chemist, it’s that failure can be the key that unlocks real innovation.

“You can either chase that failure and try to make it a pass,” he said recently, “or you can take the learnings from it and try and make a new thing.”

The search to understand why reactions sometimes don’t work has led to fundamental insights that fuel Jeremy’s scientific inquiry to this day. And it’s directly related to the breakthrough innovation he’s discussing at the upcoming Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Chemistry in the Oil Industry XVIII conference in Manchester, United Kingdom. As the group leader for the Hydrates Group in Sugar Land, Texas, Jeremy is presenting on a technology he and his team developed: a novel anti-agglomerant low dose hydrate inhibitor (AA-LDHI) chemistry that is the first commercially available product of its kind for regions with stringent environmental regulations that is also able to be mass produced.

Jeremy explains that this groundbreaking discovery comes because of ChampionX’s operating principle of challenging the status quo. In fact, their unwavering support of scientific inquiry—wherever it leads—is what drew Jeremy to the company.

“There's so much discovery to be done here,” Jeremy said. “We’re able to derive new applications through an iterative approach that builds up over time.”

He joined ChampionX with several patents and publications in the area of polymer chemistry and materials on his CV and was looking for an opportunity to pursue applied chemical synthesis. In the nine years since, he and his team have advanced the development of solutions that mitigate gas hydrates and support asphaltene control with a focus on tackling challenging flow assurance problems. His upcoming talk showcases how a hydrate inhibition chemical family (AA-LDHIs) that has been developed and used in the Gulf of Mexico for decades can be updated to be successfully implemented in other parts of the world, while also following Norway and North Sea standards for toxicity, biodegradability, and bioaccumulation.

Learn more from Jeremy and our other chemistry experts during the RSC Chemistry in the Oil Industry XVIII conference, 6-8 November in Manchester.

Did you know?  Jeremy once turned a pasta machine into a method to gently remove water from contact lenses during a previous role working for an optical medical device company.