Production Optimization and Emissions Reduction by Adaptive Load Sharing of Turbo-Compressors Available to Purchase

The operation of turbo-compressors for boosting natural gas on platforms impact the overall production capability of the facility and its emissions. Fuel efficiency can be enhanced by optimising the load distribution on parallel machines (load sharing) or the pressure increase on series configurations. The best optimal distribution of the load in parallel or series applications is impacted by several factors, most of the exogenous to the compression process, such as ambient air temperature and pressure, compressed gas molecular density and composition, machine wear, etc. The technology to be presented takes into account all the endogenous and exogenous agents that influence the machine performances by using a data driven approach and constantly calculates the optimal operating point of each turbine and compressor. The optimal operating points are in accordance to process constraints such as piping pressure limits, well minimum pressure, compressor surge and choke limits. The operation closer to the BEP (Best Operating Point) results in a significant reduction of the overall emissions of the group of machines. Operation closer to the BEP grants a reduction of the degradation of compressor and turbine performance, with an impact on maintenance cost and MTBF.