445 research outputs found

    Energy efficient drill cuttings treatment plant designed by Norwegian-Group AS A feasibility study

    Get PDF
    Masters Thesis in Environmental technologyThe cuttings produced by the oil and gas industry must be handled according to legislations. According to OSPAR, drill cuttings should contain less than 1 percent oil by weigh before discharged. There is several cuttings waste handling options. Treating the drill cuttings offshore is considered economically favorable. Some offshore treatment technologies are able to meet the legislation requirements. Norwegian-Group AS provides a treatment plant concept intended for treating cuttings offshore. The treatment plant is based on three separation technologies. The first separation stage is a steam assisted cuttings dryer. The cuttings are then transported to the thermal separation. The thermal separation chamber is fitted with steam assistance combined with a heat source. Oil and water vapor from the cuttings dryer and thermal separation chamber is separated by a membrane. Clean steam is recirculated and reused. This thesis evaluates the following topics. Potential steam supply systems for the cuttings dryer. Potential heat sources that can be combined with steam assistance in the thermal separation chamber. The feasibility of separating oil and water by membranes to reduce the energy consumption and cuttings handling cost. Potential advantages and limitations that the treatment plant may feature. Increased the separation degree by utilizing steam in combination with the cuttings dryer is considered feasible. The recommended heat source to be combined with steam in the thermal separation chamber is microwave radiation due to its energy efficiency and unique ability to desorb capillary bond water and oil. On the other hand, the idea of using a membrane to reduce the energy consumption and cuttings handling costs is considered not attractive. As it cannot satisfy the aim of cost reduction. The treatment plant may serve great advantages over the current cuttings handling options suited for offshore treatment. The potential advantages are related to treatment capacity, energy consumption and handling costs. Potential limitations are related to reaching the legislation of various cuttings characteristics

    Recovery in Thin Multi-Layered, Medium Heavy Oil Reservoir: A Simulation Study

    Get PDF
    Recovery of heavy oil from thin multi-layered reservoir is a challenging task in places such as China, Thailand and Oman. Thin layers with average thickness of 2.5 m (8.2 ft) and lower contribute to an inefficient steamflooding was reported by Liu et al. [1] as one of the factors resulting in non-commercialization for steamflooding in B92, Taobao field. This project aims to develop a 3D-model with compositional oil components that can handle thermal option. From there, the model is developed further to investigate five reservoir properties and improve recovery of a Base Case. “Schlumberger ECLIPSE 300” was used to investigate all cases and scenarios in this project. Base Case constructed has one injector completed only at permeable layers and one producer. It has a 20 × 20 × 20 Cartesian grid size representing 600 ft × 600 ft × 100 ft reservoir. An example of such a field in this region is Bokor field, Malaysia. It has a range of viscosity between 10 cP to 230 cP, porosity range of 15% to 30%, and permeability values between 50 mD to 4000 mD. These parameters with frequency and thickness of sand and shale layers were investigated. In comparison of recovery factor, porosity variation proved to be the most sensitive parameter in both water flooding and steam flooding. In the second part of this project, recovery of Base Case generated was improved by 7% through decreasing injection rate by 67% and steam viscosity to 0.5 cP. This yielded a reduction of steam-oil mobility ratio by 98%. In this case, water cut at the end of five years was reduced by 4%, and field heat loss total was reduced by 45%

    Benefits and barriers of organic Rankine cycles for waste heat recovery and deep geothermal

    Get PDF
    This thesis describes a study to evaluate the energy recovery potential and challenges associated with the application of Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC)s. Application of ORCs for both waste heat streams and deep geothermal sources are considered. A model which calculates the thermodynamic performance of ORCs for any source heat or sink stream and cycle configuration was developed. Simulations for three waste heat case studies showed a potential thermodynamic benefit from using zeotropic working fluids. An experimental rig was built to explore the reported discrepancy in performance between theory and experimental observations for zeotropic mixtures. Experiments were carried out with a near azeotropic working fluid, R410a, and a zeotropic mixture R407c. Results show that the global heat transfer coefficient of the zeotropic mixture was lower than for the azeotrope. The availability of theoretical models to accurately calculate heat transfer for zeotropic mixtures was explored. Appropriate models are available in the literature. However, to incorporate these into the ORC model is a significant bit of work beyond this project. The thermodynamic performance, footprint and cost of an ORC plant are key parameters that will determine the feasibility or otherwise of an ORC plant. These factors are considered together and the interdependence of them is discussed. Three deep geothermal heat sources are considered, within the context of these three factors. The reasons for the feasibility or otherwise of fuelling an ORC with each of these heat sources is discussed. Ultimately, while simulations show there is potential improvement in thermodynamic performance, by using zeotropic working fluid, experimental work shows there may be a penalty to pay in terms of the size of the system. The analysis of the deep geothermal case studies shows that finance and social factors also have a huge influence on whether a project to recover low enthalpy heat will evaluate or not

    Organic Rankine cycles in waste heat recovery: a comparative study

    Get PDF
    A theoretical study of organic Rankine cycles (ORCs) powered by three different waste heat sources is presented. The heat sources, all found in industrial processes, span a range of energy scales capable of powering ORCs from ∼10 kW to 10 MW. A novel method of pinch point analysis is presented, allowing variable heat input to the ORC. This study models the ORC over a range of operating conditions and with different working fluids for each heat source. Results from each source are compared to assess the influence of different heat source characteristics on optimal ORC design

    Recovery in Thin Multi-Layered, Medium Heavy Oil Reservoir: A Simulation Study

    Get PDF
    Recovery of heavy oil from thin multi-layered reservoir is a challenging task in places such as China, Thailand and Oman. Thin layers with average thickness of 2.5 m (8.2 ft) and lower contribute to an inefficient steamflooding was reported by Liu et al. [1] as one of the factors resulting in non-commercialization for steamflooding in B92, Taobao field. This project aims to develop a 3D-model with compositional oil components that can handle thermal option. From there, the model is developed further to investigate five reservoir properties and improve recovery of a Base Case. “Schlumberger ECLIPSE 300” was used to investigate all cases and scenarios in this project. Base Case constructed has one injector completed only at permeable layers and one producer. It has a 20 × 20 × 20 Cartesian grid size representing 600 ft × 600 ft × 100 ft reservoir. An example of such a field in this region is Bokor field, Malaysia. It has a range of viscosity between 10 cP to 230 cP, porosity range of 15% to 30%, and permeability values between 50 mD to 4000 mD. These parameters with frequency and thickness of sand and shale layers were investigated. In comparison of recovery factor, porosity variation proved to be the most sensitive parameter in both water flooding and steam flooding. In the second part of this project, recovery of Base Case generated was improved by 7% through decreasing injection rate by 67% and steam viscosity to 0.5 cP. This yielded a reduction of steam-oil mobility ratio by 98%. In this case, water cut at the end of five years was reduced by 4%, and field heat loss total was reduced by 45%
    corecore