Plant-wide De-oiling of Produced Water using Advanced Control

Globally, over 250 million barrels of water are produced daily from the oil and gas fields, and more than 40% of the produced water is discharged into the environment. As a consequence, a highly focused area for the Danish North-Sea oil field operators, as well as the authorities and public, is the content of oil in the produced water discharged to sea.This project is to propose a software-based innovative Produced Water Treatment (PWT) solution by using the advanced plant-wide control methodology. This will be achieved through integration of an advanced Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) anti-slug control, which is developed based on a large process scope covering from the production wells over the 1st-stage inlet separators to the produced water treatment systems, where these systems are equipped with multiple manipulators and transmitters, with a coordinated separator (water) level control and pressure control of hydrocyclones, which are developed in an optimal cooperative manner. The achieved solution will promote a completely new generation of PWT system in terms of better environmental protection, along with significantly improved production and reduced cost-vs-production ratio.