Modeling and control of an inline deoiling hydrocyclone *

Abstract

In subsea oil and gas production and processing, automatic control of operation is of significant importance. Typically, processing in subsea fields involves separation of hydrocarbons from water and rejection of water in an environmentally friendly way. Separators such as deoiling hydrocyclones help achieve these objectives. However, control strategy for hydrocyclones is not yet well established in the literature due to a lack of control oriented models for hydrocyclone. In this work we present a model for hydrocyclone based on mass balance equations. Subsequently, we propose a PI controller for controlling the water quality.