Boiler User Group 2023: Energy from Waste, Biomass and Fossil Fuels

Trudy Beeley: Head of Engineering, RJM International

Highly skilled fuels, combustion and materials handling engineer, with over 25 years’ professional experience across the biomass, bioenergy and Waste to Energy sectors.

James Hall: Head of Research, Carbon Clean

Miguel Santana: Head of Performance, FCC Environment

Mark Roberts: Head of Engineering, Bioenergy Infrastructure Group

I work for Evero, where we are reimagining what we do with waste. I have been with Evero, formally Bioenergy Infrastructure Group, for nearly 6 years where we have constructed, commissioned five power stations and operated & maintained two of those plus a further three sites. Evero own three gasification plants with fluidised beds and two combustion grate plants, so I get to deal with both waste and waste wood. As the Head of Engineering, I work with a team of Principal Engineers to support the assets and have helped them through their first few years of operation. The plants have suffered with some inherent design problems where I have worked with key suppliers to help engineer solutions to these problems improving their operability and reliability with some significant changes. Whilst engineering the solutions to the problems, we have built an Operations and Maintenance business to run the assets including implementing a Maintenance Management System, Maximo and a remote monitoring system, Ecopowersoft. I have also continuously improved the plants with control system improvements alongside our control engineers. Before my time at Evero, I was at SSE for 18 years, where I enjoyed working at Ferrybridge C Power Station, as combustion engineer, boiler engineer and as Fuel, Air and Byproducts Manager, and in the Combined Heat and Power group as Engineering Manager, where I got to work on a series of power stations including Open Cycle Gas Turbines, Closed-Cycle Gas Turbines, Anaerobic Digestion Plants and Gas Engines.

Dan Blood: Team Leader – Design & Integrity Management, Uniper

Dan leads the Design & Integrity Management Team at Uniper Technologies in the UK. Over the past 24 years, he has provided technical consultancy services to Uniper's own power generation assets and those of external clients, working primarily on the boiler plant of gas, coal, biomass and waste-fired units. He has undertaken outage inspections internationally, conducted analyses to establish and mitigate the damaging effects of flexible operation and led predictive impact assessments of gas turbine upgrades on the water / steam cycle of HRSG plant. He has also undertaken due diligence activities, led successful warranty claims against OEMs and investigated plant failures and operational incidents, most recently on EfW plant. Dan has co-authored several EPRI technical reports, presented at numerous international conferences on boiler topics and he is on the Steering Committee of the European HRSG Forum.

Phil Jenkinson: Chief Engineer – Thermal applications, N+P Group

Ronny Wagner: Managing Director, REICON Wärmetechnik und Wasserchemie Leipzig GmbH

Ronny is a water treatment professional for the application of film forming amines in water - steam cycles as well as closed cooling and heating systems. He has over 10 years’ experience in preservation of nuclear, fossil and biomass or waste to energy power plants as well as in industrial boilers. As a member of the vgbe and IAPWS he has co-authored several standards for the safe application of film forming amines in power plant chemistry. As Managing Director of REICON, a German water treatment company and manufacturer of ODACON film forming amine products, Ronny strongly focusing on business development and international projects.

Mark Symington: Principle Engineer, Altrad Babcock

Pal Galik: Business Development Manager, Power Industry Expert, Emerson Automation Solutions

Pal holds a Master degree in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University of Budapest, Hungary. He joined Emerson Hungarian Sales Office in 2005 as a control valve inside sales engineer. In 2008 successfully applied for Power Application Engineer Europe role and re-located to Chatham UK, to support European sales organization with difficult control valve problems. In the last 12 years, in his current role he’s been visiting Power Plants across Europe, analysing control valve related problems from frequent maintenance needs to difficult controllability and finding solutions to improve. He is a regular presenter at the European HRSG Forum and he also delivered he’s presentation “How (not) to kill your Turbine Bypass valve” at IMechE Steam Turbine User group event this year.

Holly Schneeberger: Senior Engineer, Fraser-Nash Consultancy

Holly is a Senior Engineer working within Frazer-Nash’s Heat and Flow group based in Glasgow after having graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a First Class Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Having joined Frazer-Nash in early 2021, Holly has immersed herself in the delivery of challenging numerical simulations including nuclear reactor coolant systems, dispersion of pollutants in public spaces, gas turbine nozzles under transient loadings, and modelling fire and smoke transport behaviour in building structures. Holly is an associate member of the IMECHE, and prior to joining Frazer-Nash Consultancy, Holly has worked as a Design Engineer for Belcan Engineering Services located in East Kilbride, and also for a period within the Advanced Forming Research Centre located in Renfrew.

Mike Myers: Group Leader – Asset Integrity, Fraser-Nash Consultancy

Stephen Lloyd: Senior Mechanical Engineer, Spindeep Ltd

Having obtained an MA (St.John's College, Oxford) and MSc (Thermodynamics - Edgbaston, Birmingham) ans cpm[leting a two year graduate apprenticeship with Davy-Power-Gas, Stephen Lloyd joined Foster Wheeler, UK. His asctivities were primarily the design of fired heaters for refineries such as Mongstad, Lindsey Oil (including one of the largest vacuum heaters) and two Irananian refineries. During that time he spent a period at Imperial College doing fundamental research into lean gas combustion and energy application gaining the Gummer Award of the Energy Institute. Overseas assignments to Paris- France, Australia and Canada occurred. He joined Bechtel in 1980 for the large Balikpapan Refinery Expansion (17 heaters plus associated chimneys), then went to the SONGS nuclear station in California, USA followed by projects including Zeit Bay, Egypt, Qatar North Dome gas field development, su[[lementary power station and part of Windscale Decommissioning, Sellafield, Frame 6 co-generation plant for Exxon-Fawley and GOSP development in the UAE. Leaving Bechtel he formed his own consultancy as Chief Engineer working on projects such as Shell Brents' reconfiguration, Phillips Ann field development, Wintershall. Libya with KBR. Other projects included Chevron Tengiz, Kazakhstan, Orimulsion conversion studies, ethylene crackers, very large FPSO (offshore Angola) with Technip and Malaysia with Petrofac and LNG plants both liquifaction and gasification with CB&I and Foster-Wheeler. He has received awards and is the author of publications, is a chartered engineer and fellow of the Energy Institute and fellow of the I Mech E. His current work includes energy minimisation by using pipelines, applications of axial compressors and emissions minimisation for railways. He is married with three adult children

Michael Anderson: KRR, Managing Director

Michael is MD of KRR Prostream Ltd, a highly respected industrial boiler cleaning company, using Swiss technology to deliver a range of onload cleaning services: Bang&Clean controlled gas explosions. High temperature camera inspections and both project management and installation of Shock Pulse Generators for continuous boiler cleaning. Michael is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with a broad range of experience, from Black belt training at a blue-chip manufacturer to managing one of the UK’s oldest operational power stations after its conversion from coal to biomass and Energy from Waste (EfW). Michael is experienced with operating and maintaining Gas Turbines, Heat Recovery Steam Generators, Steam turbines, conventional boiler plants, coal, gas and specifically the difficulties associated with EfW and biomass plants.

Peter Smithson: Risk Engineering Consultant, RSA Insurance

Pete Smithson has worked within the power generation sector for over 20 years, including roles with EDF Energy, E.ON and BWSC. His experience includes coal, CCGT and biomass, with a range of positions held from boiler engineer, plant integrity, outage management and plant manager positions. In 2022 he joined RSA Insurance as a Power Risk Consultant Engineer and is a committee member of the IMechE’s Thermal Power Committee and Boiler User Group.

Moore Holmes: Technical Specialist – Pressure Systems, British Engineering Services

Moore currently works in the boiler and pressure vessel discipline at British Engineering Services, a leading provider of statutory inspection and conformity services within the UK and Ireland. He has been involved in the safety inspection industry for over 17 years, having previously worked in the pressure equipment sector in various technical roles for 20 years. Moore is a chartered engineer and Fellow of the IMechE and SOE/Bureau of Engineer Surveyors.

Lisa Marfell: Optimisation Efficiency and Delivery Engineer, Veolia

Lisa is a chartered engineer with the IMechE and a graduate mechanical engineer from the University of Leeds. She currently works for Veolia as an Optimisation, Efficiency, and Delivery Engineer, where she helps existing clients in the North East to optimise energy use and reduce carbon emissions. Lisa has previously worked on a number of operational energy and water sites, including biomass and biogas plants, where she identified new innovative opportunities, managed plant performance, and developed engineering solutions to address operational challenges.

Luke Bailey: Senior Policy Advisor, Power CCS, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Luke Bailey is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) who leads on the development of the future policy framework for power CCUS. Luke has worked on energy policy development and delivery for the past nine years across Ofgem and BEIS/DESNZ covering the areas of CCUS, renewable heat and renewable electricity.