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NAERINGSPH-Nærings-phd

Intelligent/Smart Flow Control for Petroleum Process Technology

Alternative title: Intelligent/smart strømningskontroll av teknologi for petroleumsprosessering

Awarded: NOK 1.7 mill.

Project Number:

251612

Project Period:

2015 - 2018

Funding received from:

Organisation:

During oil and gas production, water is brought to the surface along with the hydrocarbon mixture. An essential part of oil and gas production is, therefore, to remove oil and other harmful substances from the wastewater to avoid polluting the environment. Separating oil from water is a challenging task, and one of the preferred approaches offshore is to use so-called hydrocyclones. These cyclones use centrifugal forces to separate the less dense oil from the denser water. Throughout the production facility, pumps and valves are used to control parameters such as flow rate and pressure. Due to the design of the conventional process equipment, dispersed oil droplets are often broken into smaller droplets, making them more difficult to remove using centrifugal forces only. To facilitate the water treatment, Typhonix has developed pumps and valves (low shear technology) which control the process parameters without breaking the oil droplets. Recently, Typhonix has also introduced a pump which increases, rather than reduces, the size of the dispersed droplets. This phenomenon is called droplet-droplet coalescence and involves the collision of two or more droplets, forming a single larger droplet. These larger droplets can be more easily removed. In this project, the potential of Typhonix coalescing pump has been fully utilized by developing control methods to automatically and continuously adjust and optimize the operation of the pump based on real-time process measurements. The automatic control optimizes the droplet growth and maximizes the separation efficiency. In 2016, the first year of this project, an in-depth study of the mechanisms which, inside of the pump, promotes the droplet-droplet coalescence was conducted. Also, it was studied how the pump operation and the overall process parameters affect the droplet growth. In 2017, a hydrocyclone was used to observe the actual increase in separation efficiency achieved when including the coalescing pump. Also, the new control methods were developed and tested. In 2018, the control methods were improved to reduce the response time and steady-state oscillations, and to eliminate the risk of tracking failure. In total, this project has resulted in a unique and novel utilization of Typhonix novel pump technology. Concerning operational control, the pump has been innovatively combined with existing produced water treatment equipment, utilizing the potential to maximize the water treatment efficiency.

The project will initially be characterized by literature studies in order to fully establish state-of-the-art within low shear technology and closed loop control in water-oil processing, in general. Next, the requirement specification, ''what to optimize'' and under which conditions must be formulated. This is a crucial phase in the project and care must be taken to set up realistic targets at this point. The requirement specification will yield a multi criteria design objective subjected to a wide range of design parameters that influence the overall performance in a non-trivial way. Mostly, the design parameters will be associated with the control architecture and the related parameters. This will be handled by means of extensive use of virtual prototyping. For that purpose mathematical models for all relevant component will be developed, with emphasis on the mode of operation and state variables. The envisage components to be modeled include (as a minimum): Typhonix Low Shear Control Valve (LSCV) Typhonix Coalescing Pump (CP) Typhonix Coalescing Valve (CV) Hydrocyclone The mathematical modeling will be verified via dedicated experimental work. The component models will be used in the development of commercializable concepts and subsystems including the control strategies. Virtual prototyping in system simulations models are used to validate and evaluate control strategies. Algorithm based design optimization will be introduced in order to ensure that optimal performance in relation to the developed requirement specification is obtained within the boundaries of what is physically feasible. In parallel with the virtual prototyping there will be carried out physical prototyping in order to verify and validate the developed system. The physical prototyping will facilitate tuning, adjustment and calibration of the control strategies.

Funding scheme:

NAERINGSPH-Nærings-phd