Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator

A high demand of oil products on daily basis requires oil processing plants to work with maximum efficiency. Oil, water and gas separation in a three-phase separator is one of the first operations that are performed after crude oil is extracted from an oil well. Failure of the components of the sepa...

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Main Authors: Vileiniskis, Marius, Remenyte-Prescott, Rasa, Rama, Dovile, Andrews, John
Format: Article
Published: Elsevier 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32502/
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author Vileiniskis, Marius
Remenyte-Prescott, Rasa
Rama, Dovile
Andrews, John
author_facet Vileiniskis, Marius
Remenyte-Prescott, Rasa
Rama, Dovile
Andrews, John
author_sort Vileiniskis, Marius
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description A high demand of oil products on daily basis requires oil processing plants to work with maximum efficiency. Oil, water and gas separation in a three-phase separator is one of the first operations that are performed after crude oil is extracted from an oil well. Failure of the components of the separator introduces the potential hazard of flammable materials being released into the environment. This can escalate to a fire or explosion. Such failures can also cause downtime for the oil processing plant since the separation process is essential to oil production. Fault detection and diagnostics techniques used in the oil and gas industry are typically threshold based alarm techniques. Observing the sensor readings solely allows only a late detection of faults on the separator which is a big deficiency of such a technique, since it causes the oil and gas processing plants to shut down. A fault detection and diagnostics methodology for three-phase separators based on Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) is presented in this paper. The BBN models the propagation of oil, water and gas through the different sections of the separator and the interactions between component failure modes and process variables, such as level or flow monitored by sensors installed on the separator. The paper will report on the results of the study, when the BBNs are used to detect single and multiple failures, using sensor readings from a simulation model. The results indicated that the fault detection and diagnostics model was able to detect inconsistencies in sensor readings and link them to corresponding failure modes when single or multiple failures were present in the separator.
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spelling nottingham-325022020-05-04T20:03:00Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32502/ Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator Vileiniskis, Marius Remenyte-Prescott, Rasa Rama, Dovile Andrews, John A high demand of oil products on daily basis requires oil processing plants to work with maximum efficiency. Oil, water and gas separation in a three-phase separator is one of the first operations that are performed after crude oil is extracted from an oil well. Failure of the components of the separator introduces the potential hazard of flammable materials being released into the environment. This can escalate to a fire or explosion. Such failures can also cause downtime for the oil processing plant since the separation process is essential to oil production. Fault detection and diagnostics techniques used in the oil and gas industry are typically threshold based alarm techniques. Observing the sensor readings solely allows only a late detection of faults on the separator which is a big deficiency of such a technique, since it causes the oil and gas processing plants to shut down. A fault detection and diagnostics methodology for three-phase separators based on Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) is presented in this paper. The BBN models the propagation of oil, water and gas through the different sections of the separator and the interactions between component failure modes and process variables, such as level or flow monitored by sensors installed on the separator. The paper will report on the results of the study, when the BBNs are used to detect single and multiple failures, using sensor readings from a simulation model. The results indicated that the fault detection and diagnostics model was able to detect inconsistencies in sensor readings and link them to corresponding failure modes when single or multiple failures were present in the separator. Elsevier 2016-05 Article PeerReviewed Vileiniskis, Marius, Remenyte-Prescott, Rasa, Rama, Dovile and Andrews, John (2016) Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 41 . pp. 215-230. ISSN 0950-4230 Three-phase separator ; fault detection ; fault diagnostics ; Bayesian Belief Networks ; BBN http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950423016300766 doi:10.1016/j.jlp.2016.03.021 doi:10.1016/j.jlp.2016.03.021
spellingShingle Three-phase separator ; fault detection ; fault diagnostics ; Bayesian Belief Networks ; BBN
Vileiniskis, Marius
Remenyte-Prescott, Rasa
Rama, Dovile
Andrews, John
Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator
title Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator
title_full Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator
title_fullStr Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator
title_full_unstemmed Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator
title_short Fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator
title_sort fault detection and diagnostics of a three-phase separator
topic Three-phase separator ; fault detection ; fault diagnostics ; Bayesian Belief Networks ; BBN
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32502/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32502/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/32502/