Effect of Uncontrolled Process of a Solid-Liquid Separation System

Tamunobere Ambrose Ayebakuro; Ojong Ojong Elias; Wosu Chimene Omeke

doi:10.56201/ijemt.vol.11.no7.2025.pg118.128

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Effect of Uncontrolled Process of a Solid-Liquid Separation System

Tamunobere Ambrose Ayebakuro, Ojong Ojong Elias, Wosu Chimene Omeke,

Abstract

Steady state system enables effective operation of facilities particularly processing of reservoir fluid stream in surface facilities. High solid-liquid separation efficiency was achieved using multiphase desander thereby attaining crude oil export specification. Furthermore, the operation of these facilities has been enhanced by monitoring and controlling some key thermodynamic properties of the fluid stream. These properties such as temperature, flow rate and pressure are usually prone to unsteadiness but with the incorporation of process controller the performance of multiphase desander have been improved. In this article, the effect of non- incorporation of control process have been examined and analysis carried out to highlight the huge losses in managing solids in reservoir fluids in the oil and gas industry. The study further highlights the urgent necessity to incorporate process control in processing facilities in the oil and gas industry. Surface processing facilities currently operational do not have control system integrated with the desander operation hence operators record huge maintenance cost and loss of revenue annually. Simulation of a multiphase desander was carried out without control process and the performance of the separation process was analyzed. The result showed that the process was unsteady and separation operation unable to attain stability hence solid-liquid separation could not be achieved. With incorporation of PID controllers in the control of level/flow and temperature fluctuations within the desander, timely stability was recorded within a period of 60s at the maximum. Taking pressure at 12bar for instance as the operating parameter, separation efficiencies of between58% and 100% for particle sizes between 15µm and 75µm was achieved

Keywords

Multi-phase DesanderPID Controller SimulationlevelTemperatureSeparation

References

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Effect of Uncontrolled Process of a Solid-Liquid Separation System

Abstract

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