Thomas Nigitz

Background

About Thomas Nigitz

As a scientist and engineer, I bring modern process control engineering into practice. In doing so, I focus on simplicity, agility and synergy. This allowed me, for example, to reduce the fuel consumption of a sustainable 14 MW power plant by 5%(see my PhD thesis). Currently I am leading the automation and control of research plants producing sustainable fuel and hydrogen. In process control engineering, I focus on simple solutions that are easy to understand, easy to implement, and easy to test. For example, I stabilize control loops with disturbance rejection, accelerate control loops with feedforward controls, or combine common PID controllers to powerful multivariable controllers (see publications). For this, I use mathematical process models based on physical laws. Thus, these process models can be co-developed by technology experts and are easy to transfer to similar plants. I also use these process models to test code in advance (virtual commissioning) and to allow my customers to test the code before the plant is completed (training simulator). This gives me early feedback and allows me to fit the code to the customer's needs (agile project management). This virtual commissioning also helps me to deliver a code that is as error-free as possible, and code parts that cannot be tested with it (e.g. because they are too extensive) I generate automatically so that no typos or sloppy mistakes can happen. In general, I prefer to work in a team and I am convinced that the best solutions are found in a diverse team (synergy). I experience this especially in the commissioning of novel research facilities where technology and control engineering experts work together to solve any problems that arise.