Aperfeiçoamento no projeto de um protótipo de misturador-decantador à inversão de fases visando aplicação na indústria do petróleo

In the oil industry the mixture oil/water occurs in the operations of production, transportation and refining, as well as during the use of its derivatives. The amount of water produced associated with the oil varies and can reach values of 90% in volume in the case of mature phase of the production fields. The present work deals with the development of new design of the Mixer Settler based on Phase Inversion (MDIF) in a laboratory scale. We envisage this application in industrial scale so the phases of project, construction and operation are considered. The modifications most significant, in comparison with the original prototype, include the materials of construction and the substitution of the equipment used in the mixing stage of the process. It was tested the viability of substitution of the original system of mechanical mixing by a static mixer. A statistical treatment by means of an experimental design of composed central type was used in order to evaluate the behavior of the main variables of the separation process as function of the efficiency of separation for the new device. This procedure is useful to delimit an optimal region of operation with the equipment. The variables of process considered on the experimental design were: oil concentration in the feeding water (mg/L); Total volumetric flow rate (L/h); Ratio organic/water on volumetric basis (O/A). The separation efficiency is calculated by comparison of the content of oil and greases in the inlet and outlet of the equipment. For determination of TOG (Total Oil and Grease), the method used was based in the absorption of radiation in the infra-red region. The equipment used for these determinations was InfraCal® TOG/TPH Model HATR-T2 of the Wilks Enterprise, Incorporation. It´s important to stand out that this method of measure has being used by PETROBRAS S.A. Results of global efficiency of separation oil/water varied from 75.3 to 97.7% for contaminated waters containing up to 1664,1 mg/L of oil. By means of tests carried out with a real sample of contaminated water supplied by PETROBRAS we have got an effluent specified in terms of the legal standards required for discharging. Thus, the new design of equipment constitutes a real alternative for the conventional systems of treatment of produced water in the oil industry

Controle feedback de nível baseado em sensor de imagem aplicado ao equipamento misturador-decantador à inversão de fases (MDIF®)

The treatment of wastewaters contaminated with oil is of great practical interest and it is fundamental in environmental issues. A relevant process, which has been studied on continuous treatment of contaminated water with oil, is the equipment denominated MDIF® (a mixer-settler based on phase inversion). An important variable during the operation of MDIF® is the water-solvent interface level in the separation section. The control of this level is essential both to avoid the dragging of the solvent during the water removal and improve the extraction efficiency of the oil by the solvent. The measurement of oil-water interface level (in line) is still a hard task. There are few sensors able to measure oil-water interface level in a reliable way. In the case of lab scale systems, there are no interface sensors with compatible dimensions. The objective of this work was to implement a level control system to the organic solvent/water interface level on the equipment MDIF®. The detection of the interface level is based on the acquisition and treatment of images obtained dynamically through a standard camera (webcam). The control strategy was developed to operate in feedback mode, where the level measure obtained by image detection is compared to the desired level and an action is taken on a control valve according to an implemented PID law. A control and data acquisition program was developed in Fortran to accomplish the following tasks: image acquisition; water-solvent interface identification; to perform decisions and send control signals; and to record data in files. Some experimental runs in open-loop were carried out using the MDIF® and random pulse disturbances were applied on the input variable (water outlet flow). The responses of interface level permitted the process identification by transfer models. From these models, the parameters for a PID controller were tuned by direct synthesis and tests in closed-loop were performed. Preliminary results for the feedback loop demonstrated that the sensor and the control strategy developed in this work were suitable for the control of organic solvent-water interface level

Modelagem e simulação de um separador bifásico com inversão de fases induzida

The present work has the main goal to study the modeling and simulation of a biphasic separator with induced phase inversion, the MDIF, with the utilization of the finite differences method for the resolution of the partial differencial equations which describe the transport of contaminant s mass fraction inside the equipment s settling chamber. With this aim, was developed the deterministic differential model AMADDA, wich was admensionalizated and then semidiscretizated with the method of lines. The integration of the resultant system of ordinary differential equations was realized by means of a modified algorithm of the Adam-Bashfort- Moulton method, and the sthocastic optimization routine of Basin-Hopping was used in the model s parameter estimation procedure . With the aim to establish a comparative referential for the results obtained with the model AMADDA, were used experimental data presented in previous works of the MDIF s research group. The experimental data and those obtained with the model was assessed regarding its normality by means of the Shapiro-Wilk s test, and validated against the experimental results with the Student s t test and the Kruskal-Wallis s test, depending on the result. The results showed satisfactory performance of the model AMADDA in the evaluation of the MDIF s separation efficiency, being possible to determinate that at 1% significance level the calculated results are equivalent to those determinated experimentally in the reference works

Projeto e Operação em Escala Semi-Industrial de um Equipamento para Tratamento de Águas Produzidas na Indústria do Petróleo Utilizando Nova Tecnologia: misturador-decantador à inversão de fases - MDIF

The aim of this work is to use a new technology in the treatment of produced wastewaters from oil industry. An unit for treat produced waters called UTMDIF, was designed, installed and operated in an industrial plant for treatment of effluents from oil industry. This unit operates by means of the method of separation of phase inversion and can become a promising alternative to solve the problem of oil/water separation. This method constitutes the basis of the working of a new design of mixersettler of vertical configuration which occupies small surface area. The last characteristic becomes specially important when there is limitation on the lay-out of the plant, for example, over maritime platforms to explore oil. This equipment in a semi-industrial scale treats produced wastewaters contaminated with oil at low concentrations (ranging from 30 to 150 mg/L) and throughputs of 320 m3/d (47,4 m3 m-2 h-1). Good results were obtained in oil/water separation which leads to the necessary specification to discharge those wastewaters. Besides, the non dependence of the efficiency of separation in spite of the salinity of the medium becomes the equipment an attractive new technology to treat wastewaters containing oil at low concentrations

Estudo comparativo de abordagens de inversão do fator de qualidade Q

Seismic wave dispersion and attenuation studies have become an important tool for lithology and fluid discrimination in hydrocarbon reservoirs. The processes associated to attenuation are complex and are encapsulated in a single quantitative description called quality factor (Q). The present dissertation has the objective of comparing different approaches of Q determination and is divided in two parts. Firstly, we made performance and robustness tests of three different approaches for Q determination in the frequency domain. They are: peak shift, centroid shift and spectral ratio. All these tests were performed in a three-layered model. In the suite of tests performed here, we varied the thickness, Q and inclination of the layers for propagation pulses with central frequency of 30, 40 and 60 Hz. We found that the centroid shift method is produces robust results for the entire suíte of tests. Secondly, we inverted for Q values using the peak and centroid shift methods using an sequential grid search algorithm. In this case, centroid shift method also produced more robust results than the peak shift method, despite being of slower convergence

Estimativa da profundidade do embasamento na bacia potiguar usando inversão gravimétrica

The gravity inversion method is a mathematic process that can be used to estimate the basement relief of a sedimentary basin. However, the inverse problem in potential-field methods has neither a unique nor a stable solution, so additional information (other than gravity measurements) must be supplied by the interpreter to transform this problem into a well-posed one. This dissertation presents the application of a gravity inversion method to estimate the basement relief of the onshore Potiguar Basin. The density contrast between sediments and basament is assumed to be known and constant. The proposed methodology consists of discretizing the sedimentary layer into a grid of rectangular juxtaposed prisms whose thicknesses correspond to the depth to basement which is the parameter to be estimated. To stabilize the inversion I introduce constraints in accordance with the known geologic information. The method minimizes an objective function of the model that requires not only the model to be smooth and close to the seismic-derived model, which is used as a reference model, but also to honor well-log constraints. The latter are introduced through the use of logarithmic barrier terms in the objective function. The inversion process was applied in order to simulate different phases during the exploration development of a basin. The methodology consisted in applying the gravity inversion in distinct scenarios: the first one used only gravity data and a plain reference model; the second scenario was divided in two cases, we incorporated either borehole logs information or seismic model into the process. Finally I incorporated the basement depth generated by seismic interpretation into the inversion as a reference model and imposed depth constraint from boreholes using the primal logarithmic barrier method. As a result, the estimation of the basement relief in every scenario has satisfactorily reproduced the basin framework, and the incorporation of the constraints led to improve depth basement definition. The joint use of surface gravity data, seismic imaging and borehole logging information makes the process more robust and allows an improvement in the estimate, providing a result closer to the actual basement relief. In addition, I would like to remark that the result obtained in the first scenario already has provided a very coherent basement relief when compared to the known basin framework. This is significant information, when comparing the differences in the costs and environment impact related to gravimetric and seismic surveys and also the well drillings