Development of a simulation method for the subsea production system

Abstract

The failure of a subsea production plant could induce fatal hazards and enormous loss to human lives, environments, and properties. Thus, for securing integrated design safety, core source technologies include subsea system integration that has high safety and reliability and a technique for the subsea flow assurance of subsea production plant and subsea pipeline network fluids. The evaluation of subsea flow assurance needs to be performed considering the performance of a subsea production plant, reservoir production characteristics, and the flow characteristics of multiphase fluids. A subsea production plant is installed in the deep sea, and thus is exposed to a high-pressure/low-temperature environment. Accordingly, hydrates could be formed inside a subsea production plant or within a subsea pipeline network. These hydrates could induce serious damages by blocking the flow of subsea fluids. In this study, a simulation technology, which can visualize the system configuration of subsea production processes and can simulate stable flow of fluids, was introduced. Most existing subsea simulations have performed the analysis of dynamic behaviors for the installation of subsea facilities or the flow analysis of multiphase flow within pipes. The above studies occupy extensive research areas of the subsea field. In this study, with the goal of simulating the configuration of an entire deep sea production system compared to existing studies, a DES-based simulation technology, which can logically simulate oil production processes in the deep sea, was analyzed, and an implementation example of a simplified case was introduced. © 2014 Society of CAD/CAM Engineers & Techno-Press