Championing Innovation and Community Engagement: Meet Danielle Baker, CLEANWELL® Engineer, North America
Being an R&D engineer at Vallourec requires a logical and creative mind, and Danielle Baker has both.
Danielle is a CLEANWELL® engineer who’s seen the product line go from the Research & Development (R&D) phase to the industrial line that’s up and running now at Hardy Road in Houston.
“I was involved in bringing the technology from VRCF to VAM USA,” she said. “I participated in the equipment installation, and we plated our first 14” VAM SLIJ-3 pup joint in 2020.”
CLEANWELL® is a polymer coating developed by Vallourec for the threads of their VAM® connections. It makes traditional lubrication or compounds unnecessary, is environmentally friendly, and improves operational performance. It’s used in offshore wells and other high-pressure environments.
With the equipment successfully running in R&D, Danielle transferred to the Industrial CLEANWELL line on Hardy Rd. Danielle is unique at Vallourec in North America as she’s a chemical engineer.
I manage the chemical quality from supplier to final product. Chemicals are the foundation of the CLEANWELL® process, and we must ensure that US products are of the same quality as those in France.
Danielle runs tests to ensure the chemical’s safety and then introduces them to the CLEANWELL® system.
“This requires continuous monitoring of four chemical baths and a painting process,” she said.
Additionally, there are key points during the CLEANWELL® process where the connection surface is directly analyzed. This analysis includes surface energy, surface roughness, plating thickness, and plating composition.
“The complexity and scale of this new line is challenging, but I’m excited that we’re close to completing our first order.”
Danielle earned her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at Texas A&M and her doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Oklahoma.
She learns by trial-and-error and is grateful to work in a company that values their employees for their individuality and encourages ideas from them.
“Employees are given the creative freedom to follow through on their ideas here.”
Danielle is a Houston native with two chemical engineers as parents. They encouraged her to take advanced-level courses in math and science but also fostered her creativity through painting and ballet. Now, she enjoys the creative element of sewing, quilting, and needlework in her spare time, which also uses the engineering side of her brain.
“I love taking an idea for a colorful dress, fun blanket, or strange costume, then planning the construction and seeing the piece come to life.”
Danielle also loves giving back to the community, including animal rescues and training therapy dogs.
However, Danielle’s most significant passion project is to help protect some of the most vulnerable people in her community. She’s a guardian ad litem (GAL) with Child Advocates in Harris County. GALs are appointed by a judge to a child protective services case to advocate for the child’s best interest.
“The work is emotionally taxing, but my passion for protecting children in the community keeps me going.”
As a child growing up in “Space City” Houston, she thought she would be an astronaut. Although she didn’t become an astronaut, the products she helped design go down in the other direction—to the depths of the ocean.
