Michael Capstick Email & Phone Number

Middlesborough

Billingham

Provide process engineering consultancy for a major LOPA study of a top tier COMAH site following a major loss of containment incident. Including:• Review all Health and Safety Executive Reports.• Review all previous HAZOP, LOPA and SIL information. • Develop Fault Tree Analysis• Undertake a new LOPA Analysis.• Present findings to the client.

Wilton, Redcar

Power and steam plant engineering and business performance improvements. Biomass boiler, gas CCGT, fossil plant performance engineering. Process control engineering, commissioning. HAZOP chairman for numerous engineering projects. Regulatory compliance work for biomass and conventional energy power plant, steam and power systems.Bubbling fluidised bed biomass boiler bed quality characterisation. Prediction of particle elutriation from biomass furnace. Development of strategies for controlling furnace slagging. Mathematical modelling and optimisation of biomass boiler performance. Management of new sensors for the biomass boiler (fuel on-line moisture, fuel silo level)Optimisation of the biomass boiler flue gas condenser (FGC) based on mass, momentum and energy balances. Identification of under-performance due to poor flow distribution through the economiser and scrubber sections compared to direct flow to the stack from the ID fan. HP feed heater control improvement study for maximising boiler feed water temperature to boiler.Steam heat rate modelling and optimisation of multiple steam raising assets (gas turbines, high pressure multi-fuel boilers, package boilers), including variable steam and power demand profiles, steam turbine co-generation, steam network thermodynamic losses and parasitic load.

Wilton

Design and commissioning of model predictive control of HP steam multi-stage desuperheaters.Design and commissioning of model predictive control of a steam gas heater with pumped condensate drainage.Design and commissioning of Wilton fuel gas export flow and pressure controllers.Design and commissioning of a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) automatic steam flow ramping facility using MetsoDNA and DeltaV inter-DCS implementation.Design and automatic control of HP steam network system employing multiple boiler feeds and customer off-takes.Design and commissioning of a sequence control system for the natural gas import to the Power Station using a parallel supply system for a high turndown (4000:1) requirement.Design of an on-line energy flow system for natural gas using a gas chromatograph and coriolis flow meter.Specification and implementation of an on-line optimiser for the Wilton Power Station including coal, oil and gas boilers, gas turbines, HRSGs.Development of operator training simulations within a DeltaV DCS environment allowing “what if” scenario testing of new process control projects prior to implementation.HAZOP chairman for numerous engineering projects.

Wilton

Supervisory control and data acquisition (Intellution iFix) specification and procurement for the water treatment plant using Allen-Bradley PLCs.Boiler steam attemperation control improvements.Boiler steam drum three element control improvements.Boiler cross-limited combustion control for coal, oil and gas multi-firing.Coal ball mill monitoring and control joint study (Perceptive Engineering).Intelligent sensor study for gas/pf burners (SIRA, British Steel).Automatic boiler combustion control (excess oxygen with CO trim control) improvements.Boiler feed water deaeration control improvements for multi-train vacuum and pressure deaerators.Design and commissioning of automatic boiler feed pump leak-off systems.Design and commissioning of automatic primary turbine low pressure pay-off systems.Design and commissioning of an 80 psig bled steam extraction system for No.2 secondary steam turbine.Design and commissioning of HP, IP, 80 psig, LP and 10 psia steam header pressure control.Design and commissioning of time incremental control for steam turbine governor and pass out speeder gear logic control (primary and secondary sets).Regulatory control of steam flow and pressure using electric actuators with finite numbers of stop/starts.Design and commissioning of a remote field mounted controller using telemetry for steam pressure and flow control.Boiler gas flow control including simultaneous firing of multiple gaseous fuels.Boiler mass balancing control of multi-boiler, coal mill and multi-fuel burner asset configurations.Conversion of panel based boiler control to DeltaV DCS control.Management of Mycroadvantage SCADA for oil and gas boilers.Use of asset management software (Metso) for control valves.Hot changeover of feedwater deaeration system to DeltaV DCS.Hot changeover of Wilton fuel gas network control to DeltaV DCS.Management of DeltaV DCS (development, upgrades, backups, fault finding).

Wilton

Undertook cost-benefits analysis, configuration and commissioning of process measurement and control projects on Chlorine, Caustic, EDC and power plants.Chlorine header suction pressure control improvement. Chlorine compressor anti-surge control improvement.Brine backwash sequence control improvement.Brine flow rate control to cell room.Cell deposition sequence control (Eurotherm) improvements.Hypochlorite destruction pH controller.Caustic filter feed and filtered caustic tank level control.Sodium hydroxide muliple effect evaporator control.12% caustic dilution control improvements.Hydecat effluent pH, temperature and level control.Steam desuperheater control improvement.12% caustic density analyser replacement.Root cause failure analysis of magnetic flow meter.Diagnostics brine low level trip.EDC reactor temperature controller diagnostics and controller re-tuning.Chlorine to EDC plant flow controller improvement.

Stockport, Cheshire

Modelling and simulation of a new variable speed gas compressor (Shell).Implementation of refinery short cut models for a crude oil distillation unit and a vacuum unit.Production of software for various PRO/II and PROVISION (GUI) functionality.

Leeds, United Kingdom

Dynamic simulation using SpeedUp of oil and gas systems including topsides modelling, multi-phase, multi-component physical property modelling, relief and blowdown work. Development of real time leak detection software. Surge analysis of incompressible and compressible flow systems e.g. compressor anti-surge systems, three phase (oil/water/gas) separators, risers. Use of method of characteristics (MOC) for surge analysis. Development of new MOC equations for combined dynamic momentum, material and energy equations.Oil/gas topsides simulations (Total)Dunbar sub-sea pipeline start-up study including hydrate prediction (Texaco)Lille-Frigg dynamic simulation of a slugcatcher OPPS (Kvaerner)Wanear-Cossack FPSO dynamic simulation and control study.Theddlethorpe-Killingholme real-time natural gas pipeline leak detection system (Kinetica).SpeedUp process and control model development.Gas pipeline blowdown validation study.Three phase physical property modelling (PPDS) for oil-gas systems.Modelling and dynamic simulation of a pipeline riser system.Compressor anti-surge control using CCC algorithm.Surge modelling development comparing accuracy and validity of method of characteristics (MOC) with finite difference (upwinding) for solution of hyperbolic partial differential equations.MOC equation system development incorporating material and energy balance equations.

Port Sunlight, Wirral

Computer aided chemical engineering applications (process modelling, optimisation and control) for Lever Brothers, Unichema, Quest International and National Starch. Use of dynamic simulation (SpeedUp) and model predictive control (Connoisseur). Dynamic optimisation and control of batch processes e.g. batch distillation for time optimal operation for cut fractions to maximise profitability.Mathematical modelling and simulation of soap making using a rotating disc contactor with multi-phase separation.Simulation of fatty acid distillation using ASPEN PLUS (Unichema International)Optimal control of a batch distillation of aroma chemicals using orthogonal collocation (Quest International)Control of a rotating disc contactor for soap production (Lever Brothers)Reactive distillation modelling and optimisation (Unichema International)Control of emulsion polymerisation reactor heat exchange (Vinamul Limited)Control of strong acid/strong base pH control (Crosfield Chemicals)Development of soft sensor technology for multi-component mixtures (Quest International).Implementation of Pinch technology for plate heat exchanger train in soap production (Lever Brothers).Use of advanced control software (Connoisseur) for multiple effect evaporator control (Loders Croklaan).Management of NIFES energy survey for Unilever companies.Management of Unilever internationally invited “top-up” seminar for Unilever company engineers and scientists.Industrial (National Starch, ASPEN Technology Inc.) and Academic (MIT) Visits to USA.

Warrington, United Kingdom

Process design engineeringFinite element and finite difference modelling of heat transfer and fluid flow systems. e.g. mathematical modelling of a repository for medium active vitrified waste.Heat transfer and fluid flow analysis of nuclear transport flasks.Dynamic simulation of self-heating liquors (time to boiling on loss of cooling).Design of a multiple effect evaporator system for concentrating medium active liquors.Design of a nitric acid recovery plant.Design of an effluent treatment off-gas plant.Design of a store for vitrified radioactive waste.Process and instrument commissioning of a batch plant for the production of a gelling agent for aqueous plutonium and uranium nitrates (AEA Harwell)

Doctor Of Philosophy (Phd), Chemical Engineering

Thesis title: On Improving the Performance of Dynamic Process Simulators Collaboration with Professor Colin McGreavy and Dr Peter Dew.

Msc Management Science, Diploma Of Imperial College (Dic), Operations Research, Organisational Behaviour, Economics, Finance, Accountancy, Statistics

Sponsored by BTR Limited (Invensys) Elective subjects: linear programming, integer programming, non-linear programming, stochastic.

Education record