About the Author:

            The author K.Kuppurajah is well known among the users or user-industries of gas turbines and its associated heat recovery systems in India. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Madras, presently known as Anna University. He started his career as engineer trainee in India’s largest power equipment manufacturing company namely Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), Trichy in Jan 1976 in its research and development department. He served as a member of technical committee in the year 1976 for procurement of gas turbine for coal based combined cycle pilot power plant established at BHEL, Trichy. He served there in boiler performance and proposals, product engineering and for a long period in field engineering service, meeting various end users and resolving many of their design and operational problems in gas turbine, HRSG, AFBC and CFBC boilers.

He was responsible for the design, manufacturing and establishing India’s gas turbine heat recovery system with supplementary firing, make-up water heating and fresh air firing supplied by BHEL, Trichy to ONGC, Uran, India in 1982. This is the India’s first gas turbine based co-generation plant. The above plant has been provided with indigenously designed duct burner, a supplementary firing system which is another first of its kind. The fresh air firing using force draft fan was also established in this plant for the first time. The condensate water heating prior to admitting in to de-aerator was also done in the heat recovery system for the first time. He was primarily responsible for indigenous development of duct burners for supplementary firing system, fresh air firing system and also for establishing the design for condensate pre heaters and make-up water heaters in gas turbine heat recovery system by BHEL. He was also responsible for demonstrating first time in India the automatic mode transfer from gas turbine heat recovery mode to fresh air firing mode, a most complex control system taken up as a challenge, and achieved at ONGC, Hazira in March 1990 subsequently in ONGC, Gandhar in July 1998 and in ONGC, Uran in 2001. He has demonstrated successfully the performance guarantee tests in more than 50 gas turbine heat recovery systems supplied by BHEL to many combined cycle cogeneration and combined cycle power generation plants in India. He has also undergone training in the field of field engineering and performance testing of gas turbine combined cycle and gas turbine cogeneration systems at Henry Vogt machine company, USA in 1995. He also presented many technical papers in national seminars and published many technical articles in international magazines. During his service, he published many articles on gas turbines particularly with reference to its fuels such as distillate and residual oils; their combustion and treatment systems, coal gas firing in gas turbine and its requirements when firing in gas turbine. During his tenure he also served to establish cost effective bubbling fluidized bed boilers particularly with reference to its startup system. During the end of his tenure in field engineering services he also served in the field of circulating fluidized bed boilers. All through his career he always faced and resolved challenges in design from the manufacturer’s angle of view and trouble free operation from the end user’s angle of view. Presently he is retired after serving there for little more than 35Yrs. He has written this book for the benefit of many more operating and field engineering persons who can take up his work still further and help mankind to achieve more efficient and cost effective power and cogeneration systems.