Revamping, Energy Efficiency and Exergy Analysis of an Existing Upstream Gas Treatment Facility

Abstract

Surface oil and gas treatment facilities in service for decades are likely to be oversized due to the natural depletion of their reservoirs. Despite these plants might have been designed modularly, meaning they comprise multiple identical units serving the same task, such units operate often in conditions far from the design point and inefficiently. This work analyzes the revamping options of an existing upstream gas facility, which is chosen because representative of a wide set of plants. A flexible numerical model, implemented in the HYSYS environment and dynamically linked to an Excel spreadsheet, includes the performance maps of all turbo machineries and the main characteristics of the investigated modifications in order to run simulation for many gas input conditions and to predict the performance over a year of operation and for different possible future scenarios. The first objective is to assess economically the considered options, which shall be applied only if yielding short return times of the investment since the reservoir is mature. Moreover, all options are appreciated adopting a figure of merit, here defined, that compares the overall energy consumption to that calculated with state-of-the-art technologies. In addition, an exergy and an environmental analyses are executed.

Auto Generative Capacitive Mixing for Power Conversion of Sea and River Water by the Use of Membranes

“…Exergy is usually considered for machines that deal with heat and mechanical work [32,33] though the term is also valid for electrochemical systems [34] and is the electric work that is available when considering tbe process as a whole. Exergy efficiency is then defined as how much of the available work one gets out of the system when accounting for all losses.…”

Thermodynamic analysis of an upstream petroleum plant operated on a mature field

“…The specific exergy waste reflects the losses of resources with the flared and vented gases, but also with the produced water, which is rejected in significant quantities for platforms operating on mature oilfields. It would also be relevant to compare the current power consumption with the power demand when integrating best-available-technologies, as this provides information on the maximum energy savings with the current technological limits [82].…”

On the definition of exergy efficiencies for petroleum systems: Application to offshore oil and gas processing

“…• Margarone et al [62], who proposed to compare the current plant performance against that obtainable when integrating the state-of-the-art technologies present on the market;…”