Brijbhan Prajapati, Design Manager, Electrical Engineering, Instrumentation & Automation, at Citec’s office in Mumbai, India, heads a team of three engineers, all working as control system engineers in gas turbine projects for Citec’s customer Siemens.

Prajapati’s team is responsible for the project automation part of the control system used in Siemens’ industrial gas turbines (SGT 300/400 and 800 series) for power generation applications. Prajapati, who has a total of 14 years of experience within industrial automation, is pleased with his current team and the cooperation with Siemens. “We have been working with this customer for six years, so we have a clear understanding of their expectations – and our ability to meet them. This results in high quality, within the set time and budget”.

The most important task of a control system engineer is to ensure that the system being controlled is running safely, and at maximum efficiency and availability. Prajapati and his team has specific expertise in Siemens SPPA T3000 and Siemens Simatic PCS7 DCS systems. Utilising these tools, they can program, simulate, analyse, diagnose, log, and report.

We have been working with this customer for six years, so we have a clear understanding of their expectations – and our ability to meet them. This results in high quality, within the set time and budget.

The programing mainly consists of logic development for the gas-turbine control system and auxiliaries. This includes the development of software controlling the gas-turbine start/stop system during regular operation. Moreover, the software significantly helps to improve safety during a malfunction, component failure or emergencies.

To ensure a high-quality design, the team maintains a changelog with detailed descriptions of every design adjustment they make. During factory acceptance tests (FATs), the design engineer goes through the changelog, simulating events based on the changes, to make sure that the safety and availability of the plant is not compromised.

Denis Malikov, Expert, Electrical, Instrumentation & Automation, joined Citec in late 2018, and works fulltime at the customer Outotec’s premises in Espoo, Finland. His area of expertise is within Advanced Process Control (APC) for mineral processing plants. Malikov mainly focuses on froth speed control to optimise the floatation process at the end customers’ plants. Froth speed control increases process stability and the performance of the concentration.

Denis Malikov works with maximising process stability at mineral processing plants. Photo: Sami Tuoriniemi.

Commissioning of the ACT froth speed control system is done at site; a process that can take up to ten days or more. “The commissioning phase is one of the most fascinating parts of my job. This is when we make sure that every single part of the control system works flawlessly,” Malikov explains. Commissioning involves start-up and tuning of the system, hardware checks as well as the establishment of the open platform communication (OPC) between the Outotec FrothSense server and the customer’s distributed control system (DCS).

For me, quality means providing excellent service to the customer.

“For me, quality means providing excellent service to the customer. We deliver quality by paying attention to detail, checking and rechecking everything we do and by having a continuous dialogue with our customers to know their needs. And by working safely at all times,” states Malikov.

Want to know more? Contact us!

Magnus Forsbäck
Director, Plant Engineering Europe
magnus.forsback@citec.com

Sanjay Kale
Head of Project Delivery, Citec India
sanjay.kale@citec.com