John Von Bargen

John Von Bargen

Vice President & Director of Engineering

John Von Bargen is the co-founder and Vice President of Ship & Shore Environmental. With more than 30 years’ experience designing energy-efficient VOC abatement equipment for a variety of industrial manufacturing processes (including but not limited to regenerative thermal oxidizers, concentrators, carbon units, heat exchangers, flares, and boilers), John is passionate about developing innovative solutions for today’s most pressing environmental challenges.

His experience also includes extensive process review and design of environmental and energy reduction solutions for physical plant operations, bulk solvent and gasoline terminals, barge de-gassing, aluminum forging, commercial printing, coil coating, expanded polystyrene (EPS) molding, manufacturing of resins, plastics, composites, fiberglass, pharmaceuticals, pulp & paper, asphalt, among others. With his unmatched process knowledge of EPS and pentane applications, Ship & Shore is able to provide pentane abatement equipment to over 85% of the companies in the EPS industry.

Under his direction, in order to better address client demands for energy reduction and alternative energy strategies, John’s experience and expertise has helped provide Ship & Shore’s ability to develop innovative waste heat recovery solutions for energy conservation and alternative energy solutions that help clients become more competitive while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Prior to co-founding Ship & Shore, John worked as a project engineer and Engineering Manager of Hirt Combustion Engineers, and as Vice President of White Horse Technologies, designing air pollution abatement systems utilizing thermal oxidizers, concentrators, waste heat boilers, heat exchangers, and inert gas generators.

He has worked in a variety of engineering roles over the years (gaining knowledge from shipyard tankers) as Director of the physical plant at Loyola Marymount, and as President of SGA, a manufacturer of Chemilluminescent, Ozone and NOx analyzers, and ozone generators for water treatment. He was also Vice President of Ratfisch Instruments Ltd. a manufacturer of Gas Chromatographs, FID’s, LEL monitoring and control systems for seven years.

John holds a B.S. Mechanical Engineering from Graduate Merchant Marine Academy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He later studied Chemical Engineering while employed at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. John is a highly sought-after speaker for trade and industry conferences and regularly publishes on air pollution abatement technologies and safety. He is a Co-holder of several patents.