CONTROLLING THE PERFORMANCE OF A CYCLONIC OIL-WATER SEPARATION SYSTEM

This work analyzes various configurations for the control of a recently developed compact oil-water separation process for offshore production platforms consisting of a gravity separator and a sequence of three modules of hydrocyclones. Three different control algorithms were compared for interface level control in the separator: proportional and integral, band and linear model predictive control. These algorithms were combined with a classical differential pressure ratio (DPR) control for the modules of hydrocyclones. Results have shown that band control is a promising approach for the interface level and that the DPR control is better if only used in the last module of the sequence of hydrocyclones.