Compensation of Inlet Flowrate Fluctuations inOffshore Downstream Sections. Control Algorithmand performance evaluation

摘要

Offshore oil production sites are submitted to high fluctuations of their inlet flowratesdue to the hydrodynamic regimes (so called slug regime) occurring in the wells and inthe lines from the wells to the station. Such fluctuations may downgrade efficiency ofdownstream plants like water treatment. Using the accumulation provided by theseparators, a simple control strategy is proposed for reducing the downstream flowratefluctuations for small disturbances while insuring that the level is maintained within apredefined admissible domain for large disturbances. A validation procedure, associatedwith normalized evaluation criteria, is proposed for comparing different controlstrategies under the same input disturbance conditions. This procedure makes use ofboth simulation and online recorded data. The efficiency improvement provided by thenew controller is shown over a long period of operation.