A member of WeirGroup’s R&D team has won the prestigious ‘Engineering Excellence through Innovation’ prize from Rolls-Royce as part of a team with Rolls-Royce engineers. Edmond Nowicki, a senior engineer at the company’s valve facility in Lille, Northern France, gained the award, which is widely accepted as recognition of ingenuity and excellence in for projects that demonstrate a high degree of innovation, for the research and development work the team completed on a new design of steam generator relief valve (SGRV) – a critical component of plant safety. The new valve design pushes out the boundaries of a soft-seated design in a high temperature application, and as a consequence has reduced manufacturing costs and made the valve even more tolerant to potential debris damage.
M. Nowicki worked on the project for over two years with engineers from both the Rolls Royce Components division based in Derby and with several teams across the Weir Group. Throughout the process, the team developed and tested prototypes until a robust set of parameters and tolerances were achieved, ensuring units would always meet requirements.
