Qpinch

“The industry can painlessly make a dent in their energy consumption and reduce emissions in the process”

Christian Heeren, Director Business Development & Co-founder

We’re committed to bringing our innovative chemical heat transformer to your plant and to helping your business save on energy bills while reducing your environmental footprint.

Meet the people behind Qpinch.

Meet the team

Join our team, we're hiring

Wouter Ducheyne
CEO & Co-founder

Wouter Ducheyne

Wouter graduated from the University of Leuven as Master in chemical engineering in 1997. He has since built up seventeen years of professional experience in the chemical industry. Predominantly active in engineering and operations, he evolved from process engineer, project engineer, project manager (PMP) over director chapter liaison and production manager to coach and member of the PMI board of directors at BASF.
Driven by his passion to turn ideas into practical applications, he started in 2010 to develop the new and patented technology to create industrial energy from waste heat, and co-founded the company in 2012.

Christian Heeren
Chief Business Development Officer & Co-founder

Christian Heeren

Christian graduated as a Master in Law at the University of Antwerp in 1999 and obtained an MBA at the Antwerp Management School in 2000. He acquired fifteen years of expertise in different business units of one of the largest global family businesses, in the US, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
His commercial and sales experiences in this industrial business to business environment are underpinned by a strong entrepreneurial mindset.
In 2012 he teamed up with Wouter Ducheyne to co-found Qpinch and to bring its innovative solutions to the industry.

Erik Verdeyen
Chief Marketing Officer

Erik Verdeyen

Erik holds a Master’s degree in Business Engineering. In 1994 he started consulting on internet projects for large companies and organizations including IBM, Agfa, European Commission, Carrefour Group and Port of Antwerp. Over the years he gained extensive experience in various roles as an information architect, UX designer, project manager, digital and business strategist.
In 2006 he co-founded Internet Architects, a strategic digital agency. In charge of business development, the team grew of two to 40.
He is devoted bringing Qpinch’s solution to the global industry’s attention.

Patrick Van Looveren
Chief Legal Officer

Patrick Van Looveren

After obtaining his master in law from the Catholic University of Leuven, Patrick joined the corporate finance department of a reputable law firm based in London.
He later moved on to pursue his career as a lawyer and legal counsel in Belgium with a focus on corporate and commercial law. Following a decade of legal work, he established his private company distributing of food ingredients, for which he has been active during the past nine years. He gained substantial experience in international procurement and contracting–primarily in Europe and Asia.
Fascinated by the technology, Patrick was convinced by Qpinch’s potential to reduce the global industrial footprint. Combining his legal and commercial negotiation skills, he joined the team to construct and supervise the legal framework.

Kelly De Koninck
Lead System Engineer

Kelly De Koninck

Kelly holds a Master of Science in Electronic Engineering (specialty Telecommunications). He gained his extensive expertise in connectivity and system engineering from a wide variety of technically related positions with leading telecom operators.
His past experiences comprise roles as Network Backbone Operator, Product Design Engineer, Portfolio and Product Manager in B2B and enterprise environments. As Solutions Manager and Sales Engineer, he also has a strong track record with client facing and solution design.
His broad knowledge is an important asset to developing state-of-the-art steering and monitoring systems for our solutions.

Steve Bonte
Junior Process Engineer

Steve Bonte

Steve holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Sciences, biochemical engineering (University of Leuven, Belgium). His keen interest in science and technology combined with his knowledge of electricity, electronics, and biochemical engineering, gives an extra boost to the team.
As part of the operational unit, he is responsible for rolling out our industrial chemical heat transformers to customers across Europe.

Simon Rousseau
Senior Process Engineer

Simon Rousseau

Simon joined Qpinch in September 2016. With 5 years at Jacobs Engineering and international experience in designing solutions, he is a key component to strengthening our operational team. His expertise in Oil & Chemicals allows us to focus on a wide-scale solution for this industry and deepen our understanding of energy efficiency.

As Senior Process Engineer Rousseau will be responsible for process development and design new projects at key accounts. Simon holds a Master’s degree of Science in Chemical Engineering (University of Leuven, Belgium).

Qpinch Awards

Qpinch and the University of Ghent win the RSC 2015 Emerging Technologies competition

Qpinch (formerly named Caloritum), a spin-off of the University of Ghent and the University of Ghent department of bio-engineering sciences (Professor Christian Stevens) won the prestigious 2015 Emerging Technologies competition organized by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London (July 2, 2015). A jury of experts and industry professionals chose the chemical heat pump technology to recover industrial waste heat as the best new innovation out of more than a hundred applications in the category Energy & Sustainability.