Digital Twin for Optimal Design and Operation of Compact Combined Cycles in Offshore Oil and Gas Installations

The goal of DIGITAL TWIN is to develop the underlying models and modelling software necessary to design a digital twin for an offshore steam bottoming cycle with respect to optimizing its operational efficiency and reliability. The digital twin will be designed to help simulate operations of bottoming cycles before installation as well as running existing bottoming cycles more efficiently with higher operational reliability and lower cost. This can result in more widespread implementation of steam cycles in offshore oil and gas production and increase energy efficiency and reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by up to 25%. Through close collaboration between researchers, end users and vendors, a mapping will be performed of the key physics models to be incorporated into a digital twin of a steam cycle. These can be both transient and thermal models. It is likely that transient models will be more relevant in the future, as the cycles may operate in conjunction with intermittent renewable energy sources like wind power. This means that the cycle will have to perform rapid start up when the wind dies down. Key questions include what are the important KPIs in the future systems. Operational challenges may include increasingly variable heat and power demand which may trigger needs for more estimations of remaining lifetime, current equipment degradation rate and maintenance schedule. Previously cracking of heat exchangers and other issues have lead to poor operational reliability of offshore steam cycles. A digital twin will be able to simulate running of the steam cycle to optimize operational parameters and improve reliability and will thus be useful both to the future offshore energy system and those that exist today. A novel early fault detection system will also be developed. At the core of this system will be a novel sensor scheme and a signal processing system. Increased digitalization will help reduce manning and operational expenses on the platforms. A design specification has been developed for the Digital Twin and development of a model for the OTSG has started. Surrogate models for steam cycles that operate faster than previous models developed in COMPACTS2 are under development. Work has started on sensors and signal processing.

The goal of DIGITAL TWIN is to develop modelling software necessary to design a digital twin for an offshore bottoming cycle with respect to optimizing its operational efficiency and reliability. The digital twin will be designed for use in greenfield applications to help simulate operations of bottoming cycles before installation as well as for brownfield cases, where existing bottoming cycles can be run in a more efficient way with higher operational reliability. This can result in more widespread implementation of steam cycles in offshore oil and gas production which will increase energy efficiency and reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by up to 25% Through close collaboration between researchers and the end users as well as potential vendors, a mapping will be performed of the key physics models to be incorporated into a digital twin of a steam cycle. These can be both transient and thermal models and it is likely in the future that transient models will be more relevant, as the cycles may operate in conjunction with intermittent renewable energy sources like wind power. This means that the cycle will have to perform rapid start up when the wind dies down. Key questions include what are the important KPIs in the future systems. Operational challenges may include increasingly variable heat and power demand which may trigger needs for more estimations of remaining lifetime, current equipment degradation rate and maintenance schedule. Previously cracking of heat exchangers and other issues have lead to poor operational reliability of offshore steam cycles. A digital twin will be able to simulate running of the steam cycle to optimize these parameters and improve operational reliability and will thus be useful both to the future offshore energy system and those that exist today. A novel early fault detection system will also be developed. At the core of this system will be a novel sensor scheme and a signal processing system.