KEH Energy Engineering

Kenneth E. Heselton, P.E.

Owner and Principal Engineer

Training for service as a merchant marine engineering officer; almost 40 years experience operating, designing and building boiler plants both on and offshore; developing energy conserving ideas into working final designs; all combine to make Ken Heselton a resource unique to industry. Now semi-retired, he's still available for those unique problems and training.

Education:

Ken is a graduate of Kings Point, the United States Merchant Marine Academy, with a B.S. in Marine Engineering. His high school education in Andover Central School, Andover, New York was shared with a class of 32 students.

Experience:

Ken holds a license from the U.S. Coast Guard as a Second Assistant Engineer of steam ships of all horsepower and Third Assistant Engineer of diesel driven ships. he served for more than three years as an engineering officer on board several merchant ships. The experience of operating alone, in the middle of an ocean, generates a form of resourcefulness that is unattainable any other way. Convinced he could design better plants than the ones he was operating Ken jumped ship to do just that in 1968. He started with four years in the central engineering department of Hercules Incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware.

Serving as Engineer, Chief Engineer, and Manager of Technical Services for Power and Combustion from 1972 through 1994 he prepared proposals, designed the systems, watched over their construction and startup. He developed new systems and installations for hundreds of boiler plants. Power and Combustion service personnel reported to Ken throughout the one year warranty period so he was always aware of what worked and what didn't.

Ken has a record of success with unique ventures in energy conservation and power plant design. At Hercules he shared the lead in scaling up an exothermic reactor by a factor of four to save over one million dollars. He designed and directed construction of the fume incineration system at Nevamar Corporation which received an award from Power Magazine in 1981. He designed a one-hundred million Btu per hour energy recovery project in 1984 that continues to save that much energy today. He designed one of the first programmable controller based multiple burner flame safeguard (burner management) systems approved by underwriters.

He directed hundreds of "turnkey" projects before the concept (a combination of today's "design-build" and "commissioning") gained favor. Several plants were converted from coal firing to oil and more than one-hundred to gas, gas/oil, or gas and oil firing using the turnkey concept. Turnkey converts an idea or concept into an operating plant. The owner is handed the keys to a facility that is designed, built, placed in service, and tested to prove performance - that's turnkey.

Since January of 1995 Ken has operated as KEH Energy Engineering, a consulting service to professional engineers and contractors with needs for troubleshooting and design of boiler systems. He has performed in depth analysis of several boiler plants in the Baltimore metropolitan area with recommendations for annual energy savings of several million dollars. He provides the required boiler operator training for reduction of NOx emissions to satisfy the requirements of the Maryland Department of the Environment. He is promoting additional training of boiler operators to recognize fuel savings and improved operating safety. He has identified potential fuel and electricity savings as high as one hundred thousand dollars simply by training the operators in two existing plants.

Ken is licensed as a Professional Engineer in the states of Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He was also a CEM (Certified as an Energy Manager by the Association of Energy Engineers) from 1983 until semi-retirement in 2008.