Compression Machinery for Oil and Gas

Dr. Brun is the Machinery Program Director at Southwest Research Institute. In this position he leads an organization of over 60 engineers and scientists that focuses on research and development on energy systems, rotating machinery, and pipeline technology. Dr. Brun’s experience includes positions in engineering, project management, and management at Solar Turbines, General Electric, and Alstom. He holds seven patents, authored over 250 technical papers, and co-authored two textbooks on gas turbines. Dr. Brun won an R&D 100 award in 2007 for his Semi-Active Valve invention and ASME Oil & Gas Committee Best Paper/Tutorial awards in 1998, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016. He was chosen to the “40 under 40” by the San Antonio Business Journal. He is the current chair of the ASME Supercritical CO2 Power Plant committee and the past chair of the ASME-IGTI Board of Directors and the ASME Oil & Gas Applications Committee. He is also a member of the Global Power & Propulsion Society Executive Board, the API SOME, the Asia Turbomachinery Symposiums, the Fan Conference Advisory Committee, and the Supercritical CO2 Symposium Advisory Committee. Dr. Brun is the Executive Correspondent of Turbomachinery International Magazine and an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Gas Turbines for Power.

Rainer Kurz is the Manager, Systems Analysis at Solar Turbines Incorporated, in San Diego, California. His organization is responsible for predicting compressor and gas turbine performance, for conducting application studies, and for field performance testing. Dr. Kurz attended the Universitaet der Bundeswehr in Hamburg Germany, where he received the degree of a Dr.-Ing. in 1991. He joined Solar Turbines in 1993, and holds his current position since 1995. Dr. Kurz is the past chair of the ASME/IGTI Oil and Gas Applications Committee, a member of the Gas Machinery Research Council Project Supervisory Committee, the GMC Conference Organizing Committee, the Texas A&M Turbomachinery Symposium Advisory Committee, the Asian Turbomachinery Symposium Advisory Committee, and the SDSU Aerospace Engineering Advisory Committee. He was elected ASME Fellow in 2003. He has authored numerous publications on turbomachinery related topics, with an emphasis on compressor applications, dynamic behavior, and gas turbine operation and degradation. Many of his publications were considered of archive quality and were accepted for publications in Engineering Journals. He has received several ‘Best Paper’ and ‘Best Tutorial’ Awards at the ASME TurboExpo Conferences and is the recipient of the 2013 Industrial Gas Turbine Technology award.