Separator Optimisation
Background
Jorin's client was experiencing an on-going problem with high oil in water concentrations from their installed separator. It was understood that the interface level within the vessel fluctuated and it was believed these fluctuations presented a high degree of variability in water quality, leading to problems with control of their produced water separation process.
Aim
To investigate the effect of variation in separator interface levels on both the oil in water concentration and droplet size distributions leaving the separator and then based on these findings, to recommend an optimum interface level.
Results
On site analysis was conducted using Jorin's mobile ViPA technology which is designed and constructed to work in hazardous environments.
A graph of oil concentrations is shown in Figure 1 and mean oil droplet sizes are shown in Figure 2. Initial conditions were that the interface level was at 21% and both oil concentrations and drop sizes exhibited high degrees of variability. The interface level was then increased to 27% and both the oil concentration and the degree of variation in oil concentration was recorded to decrease, however, the degree of variation in oil drop size increased. The decrease in oil concentration was beneficial to the downstream process while the increased variability in drop sizes were not found to detrimental to performance.
Conclusions
It is evident that the variability of interface levels has an effect on process stability and efficiency. On this basis, a control system that more adequately manages the vessels' interface is warranted; together with a operational practice that maintains an interface level of 27% would reduce the workload of the downstream separation process plant.
These results clearly show the benefit of installing ViPA based technology downstream of separators to provide real time concentration and size measurements.