James J. McKinley, President
Kin-Tek Laboratories, Inc.
Gases & Instrumentation is pleased to announce that James J. McKinley,
President of Kin-Tek Laboratories is the Gases & Instrumentation 2008
Gases Technologist of the year. This award, decided by independent judges, is
for his years of work with gases and for the development of permeation tube
technology for the creation of dynamically blended calibration and test gas
mixtures. McKinley’s work has resulted in significant improvements and utility
of a key gases technology.
James McKinley worked initially for the Monsanto
Company. He held various positions, but worked
mainly in the development of on-stream analysis
systems. Areas of interest included pioneering work
in sub-ambient temperature gas chromatography, the
design of mixed phase GC columns, the use of permeation sampling techniques for on-stream analysis, and
the development of a simplified, miniaturized process
GC. His activities at Monsanto resulted in two patents
and several publications.
In 1970, McKinley founded Kin-Tek Laboratories, Inc.
and continues serving as president and technical director.
Kin-Tek manufactures permeation tubes and instruments
for generating precise gas standards. His scientific focus
since then has centered on the development of techniques and equipment for gas analyzer calibration.
At the start of Kin-Tek, McKinley developed instru-
mentation that effectively allowed for routine field
applications of permeation tubes to provide on-line
calibration mixtures of reactive analytes and low
ppm concentrations. Later, he developed a vacuum
technique for measuring the vapor flow rate from a
permeation tube. This was followed by the fabrication
of a refillable permeation tube that could be used to
create vapor concentrations in the thousands of ppm
concentration range. Since then, McKinley has developed permeation tube standards for a broad range of
compounds, extending the applications from less than
30 compounds to over 500 compounds.
He has authored or co-authored numerous technical
papers and is the holder of several patents. Mckinley
attended the University of Texas at Austin and University
of Houston. He earned B. S. (Physics) and M. S. (
Mathematics) degrees from University of Houston.
Paul Nesdore, Publisher/Editor of
Gases & Instrumentation conducted
an interview with James J. McKinley,
President of KIN-TEK Laboratories, Inc.
the G&I 2008 Gases Technologist of
the Year, where McKinley looks back
and ahead at the industry.
PAUL Nesdore: It seems like you
have followed permeation
tubes from their birth to the
present time.
JAMES J. McKinley: That’s right.
When I first started dealing
with permeation tubes there
were only a very few applications that seemed to have any
real promise.
PN: What turned that around?
JJM: What changed the entire
concept was some work at the
National Institute of Health.
