As the demand for offshore oil platforms and eco-friendly oil production has increased, it is necessary to determine the optimal conditions of offshore oil production platforms to increase profits and reduce costs as well as to prevent environmental pollution. The Reid vapor pressure (RVP) of product oil is a key specification as an environmental consideration. To achieve a practical design for an offshore platform, it is necessary to consider environmental specifications based on an integrated model describing all units concerned with oil and gas production. In addition, an effective optimization strategy is required to determine the design variables. In this study, using Aspen HYSYS and a stochastic optimization strategy for simulation and optimization, the design variables for the crude oil separation process were simultaneously determined to maximize profits. The results of this research show that the condensate recycling train has an excellent capability to adjust the vapor pressure of crude oil, and an increase in the separation stage results in an improvement in the process performance. It is also important to consider the trade-off between the oil production and operating costs because an increase in the oil production rate and a decrease in the RVP of product oil can be achieved by an additional expenditure in the operating costs. This study can facilitate the design of efficient and eco-friendly offshore platforms.
-The interest about new and renewable energy is increasing to reduce the burden of problems by depletion of fossil fuels and air pollutions. For example, LNG/CNG and LPG are expected to be replaced, especially in transportation use, by HCNG mixture and DME-LPG mixture, respectively. Because these new energies are still flammable gases, it is not inherently safe from the explosion. In this research, the quantitative risk analysis for using alternative mixtures in existing recharging facilities has been studied by using three types of explosion models (TNT equivalency model, PHAST and CFD-based FLACS) to manage the risk effectively. The differences of results by models were compared against, and the practical ways of when and how to use these models were suggested. It was also predicted that conventional gas filling stations would be converted as new energy stations without additional explosion risk.
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