Abstract
Severe slugging flow is always challenging in oil & gas production, especially for the current offshore based production. The slugging flow can cause a lot of problems, such as those relevant to production safety, fatigue as well as capability. As one typical phenomenon in multi-phase flow dynamics, the slug can be avoided or eliminated by proper facility design or control of operational conditions. Based on a testing facility which can emulate a pipeline-riser or a gas-lifted production well in a scaled-down manner, this paper experimentally studies the correlations of key operational parameters with severe slugging flows. These correlations are reflected through an obtained stable surface in the parameter space, which is a natural extension of the bifurcation plot. The maximal production opportunity without compromising the stability is also studied. Relevant studies have already showed that the capability, performance and efficiency of anti-slug control can be dramatically improved if these stable surfaces can be experimentally determined beforehand. The paper concludes that obtaining the stable surface on the new developed map can significantly improve the production rate in a control scheme. Even though the production rate can be further improved by moving the stable surface using advanced control strategies, the constant inputs can in some cases be preferable due to the easier implementation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
T. J. Hill, D. G. Wood. Slug flow: Occurrence, consequences, and prediction. In Proceedings of University of Tulsa Centennial Petroleum Engineering Symposium, SPE, Tulsa, USA, 1994.
L. Hansen, S. Pedersen, Z. Yang, J. Biltoft. Recreating riser slugging flow based on an economic lab-sized setup. In Proceedings of the 5th IFAC International Workshop on Periodic Control Systems, University of Caen Basse-Normandie, Caen, France, pp. 47–52, 2013.
K. Jepsen, L. Hansen, C. Mai, Z. Yang. Emulation and control of slugging flows in a gas-lifted offshore oil production well through a lab-sized facility. In Proceedings of International Conference on Control Applications, IEEE, Hyderabad, India, pp. 906–911, 2013.
I. Ogazi, Y. Cao, L. Y. Lao, H. Yeung. Production potential of severe slugging control systems. In Proceedings of the 18th IFAC World Congress, IFAC, Milano, Italy, pp. 10869–10874, 2011.
G. O. Eikrem. Stabilization of Gas-lift Wells by Feedback Control, Ph.D. dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, 2006.
F. D. Meglio, N. Petit, V. Alstad, G. O. Kaasa. Stabilization of slugging in oil production facilities with or without upstream pressure sensors. Journal of Process Control, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 809–822, 2012.
S. Pedersen, P. Durdevic, Z. Yang. Learning control for riser-slug elimination and production-rate optimization for an offshore oil and gas production process. In Proceedings of the 19th IFAC World Congress, IFAC, Cape Town, South Africa, 2014.
S. Pedersen, K. Stampe, S. L. Durderic, P. Durdevic, Z. Yang. Experimental study of stable surfaces for anti-slug control in multi-phase flow. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Automation and Computing, Dedforolshire, UK, pp. 43–48, 2014.
G. F. Hewitt, D. N. Roberts. Studies of Two-phase Flow Patterns by Simultaneous X-ray and Flash Photography. Defense Technical Information Center, UK, 1969.
N. L. Li, L. J. Guo, W. S. Li. Gas-liquid two-phase flow patterns in a pipeline riser system with an s-shaped riser. International Journal of Multiphase Flow, vol. 55, pp. 1–10, 2013.
A. Bøe. Severe Slugging Characteristics, NTH, Trondheim, Norway, 1981.
F. E. Jansen, O. Shoham, Y. Taitel. The elimination of severe slugging-experiments and modeling. International Journal of Multiphase Flow, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 1055–1072, 1996.
J. M. T. Thompson, H. B. Stewart. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Chichester Great Britain, 1986.
K. S. Johal, C. E. Teh, A. R. Cousins. An alternative economic method to riserbase gas lift for deep water subsea oil/gas field developments. In Proceedings of Society of Petroleum Engineers, Offshore Europe, Aberdeen, UK, 1997.
B. Hu. Characterizing Gas-lift Instabilities, Ph.D. dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Petroleum Engineering and Applied Geophysics, Norway, 2004.
E. Jahanshahi. Control Solutions for Multiphase Flow: Linear and Nonlinear Approaches to Anti-slug Control, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Chemical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, 2013.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank colleagues J. P. Stigkær, A. Aillos, C. Yigen, K. G. Nielsen and P. Molinari from Mærsk Oil A/S, colleagues P. Sørensen, A. Andreasen, S. A. Meybodi and J. Biltoft from Rambøll Oil &Gas A/S, and H. Enevoldsen, K. L. Jepsen, L. Hansen and C. Mai fromAAU, for many valuable discussions and supports.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work was supported by Innovation Fund Denmark through the PDPWAC Project (No. 95-2012-3).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pedersen, S., Durdevic, P., Stampe, K. et al. Experimental study of stable surfaces for anti-slug control in multi-phase flow. Int. J. Autom. Comput. 13, 81–88 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-015-0915-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-015-0915-9