Application of H ? Robust Control on a Scaled Offshore Oil and Gas De-Oiling Facility

Petar Durdevic and Zhenyu Yang
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Petar Durdevic: Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Esbjerg Campus, Niels Bohrs Vej 8, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark
Zhenyu Yang: Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Esbjerg Campus, Niels Bohrs Vej 8, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-18

Abstract: The offshore de-oiling process is a vital part of current oil recovery, as it separates the profitable oil from water and ensures that the discharged water contains as little of the polluting oil as possible. With the passage of time, there is an increase in the water fraction in reservoirs that adds to the strain put on these facilities, and thus larger quantities of oil are being discharged into the oceans, which has in many studies been linked to negative effects on marine life. In many cases, such installations are controlled using non-cooperative single objective controllers which are inefficient in handling fluctuating inflows or complicated operating conditions. This work introduces a model-based robust H ? control solution that handles the entire de-oiling system and improves the system’s robustness towards fluctuating flow thereby improving the oil recovery and reducing the environmental impacts of the discharge. The robust H ? control solution was compared to a benchmark Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control solution and evaluated through simulation and experiments performed on a pilot plant. This study found that the robust H ? control solution greatly improved the performance of the de-oiling process.

Keywords: oil & gas; offshore; phase separation; multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) control; robust control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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