Control-Oriented Modeling and Experimental Validation of a Deoiling Hydrocyclone System

Mads V Bram,Dennis S Hansen,Stefan Jespersen,Zhenyu Yang

doi:10.3390/pr8091010

Abstract

As the treated water from offshore oil and gas production is discharged to the surrounding sea, there is an incentive to improve the performance of the offshore produced water treatment, to reduce the environmental pollutants to the sea. Regulations determine both the maximum allowed oil concentration and the total annual quantity. It is reasonable to assume that when better separation equipment or methods are developed, the regulation will become more strict, and force other producers to follow the trend towards zero harmful discharge. This paper develops and validates a hydrocyclone model to be used as a test-bed for improved control designs. The modeling methodology uses a combination of first-principles to define model structure and data-driven parameter identification. To evaluate and validate the separation performance, real-time fluorescence-based oil-in-water (OiW) concentration monitors, with dual redundancy, are installed and used on sidestreams of a modified pilot plant. The installed monitors measure the inlet and outlet OiW concentration of the tested hydrocyclone. The proposed control-oriented hydrocyclone model proved to be a reasonable candidate for predicting the hydrocyclone separation performance.

Highlights

The world’s total primary energy supply is predicted to increase from 661.5 exajoules in 2019 to960.8 exajoules in 2050, which is an increase of 45.2% or an annual growth of 1.2% [1]
Other issues arise from the low OiW concentration that calls for very sensitive OiW
This paper collected and elaborated on a combined hydrocyclone model composed of a virtual flow resistance model with an extended trajectory model

Summary

Introduction

The world’s total primary energy supply is predicted to increase from 661.5 exajoules in 2019 to960.8 exajoules in 2050, which is an increase of 45.2% or an annual growth of 1.2% [1]. The world’s total primary energy supply is predicted to increase from 661.5 exajoules in 2019 to. Within the same time frame, the Energy Information Administration has estimated that the crude oil production will increase from 83.3 to 100.5 million barrels per day, which is an increase of 20.7% or an annual growth of 0.6% [1]. Being a successful pioneer in cleaner operation gives incentive for laws and regulations to be stricter, which in turn forces other operators to deploy more sustainable methods to comply with the stricter discharge limits. This involves process optimization for both the control and plant design of the produced water treatment (PWT) train

Results

Discussion

Conclusion