Sharif Digital Repository

In the optimization of naturally fractured reservoirs, it is required to take into account their complex flow behavior due to high conductivity fractures. In this regard, the possible effects of fractures must be included in the optimization procedure. In a water-flooding project, fast water breakthrough from injection to production wells may be occurred because of high permeability fractures. To consider the effect of the fracture system, a multi-criterion optimization procedure is proposed in this work. For this contribution, Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm version II (NSGA-II) is implemented for the optimization purposes. Considering the effect of the fracture system on the flow... 

In pore network modeling, the void space of a rock sample is represented at the microscopic scale by a network of pores connected by throats. Construction of a reasonable representation of the geometry and topology of the pore space will lead to a reliable prediction of the properties of porous media. Recently, the theory of multi-cellular growth (or L-systems) has been used as a flexible tool for generation of pore network models which do not require any special information such as 2D SEM or 3D pore space images. In general, the networks generated by this method are irregular pore network models which are inherently closer to the complicated nature of the porous media rather than regular... 

In the optimization of naturally fractured reservoirs, it is required to take into account their complex flow behavior due to high conductivity fractures. In this regard, the possible effects of fractures must be included in the optimization procedure. In a water-flooding project, fast water breakthrough from injection to production wells may be occurred because of high permeability fractures. To consider the effect of the fracture system, a multi-criterion optimization procedure is proposed in this work. For this contribution, Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm version II (NSGA-II) is implemented for the optimization purposes. Considering the effect of the fracture system on the flow... 

In this paper real-time optimization of the Tennessee Eastman challenge process is accomplished in a fuzzy environment. This study focuses on violation of TE constraints in fuzzy environment and also violation of some additional constraints originated from operating mode of the plant. Furthermore the objective function is treated in fuzzy form. Results show a great reduction of operating cost, which is selected as the objective function of this study. The theory of fuzzy optimization, which is the main contribution of this paper, is to reformulate the fuzzy constraints and fuzzy objective function into a crisp programming problem and to solve it by a conventional method of optimization. The... 

On-line optimization for the base case of the Tennessee Eastman (TE) challenge problem is presented; furthermore, an interesting operating condition near base case has been obtained, which results in a lower cost function. The proposed method is based on the estimation of the internal states and the time varying parameters of the process model based on an Extended Kalman filter. The sequential quadratic programming method has been used to accomplish the non-linear programming (NLP) task. The objective function is the operational cost while the constraints are the reactor mass balance, safe operation of the process equipment, and the conditions that satisfy the product quality and flow. The... 

The formation of crystals from solutions plays a key role in various industrial applications. In this study, a new approach is presented into the optimal control of batch cooling crystallizers through a genetic algorithm. The Population balance is formularized for a typical batch crystallizer. The objective functions considered here are related to quality of products at the end of the batch. These functions are objective function of maximum mean weight size, closeness to the specified value and minimum coefficient of variation. By using an optimization algorithm (genetic algorithm), the minimum and maximum values of the objective function the input temperature parameter are obtained. The... 

Computer aided history matching techniques are increasingly playing a role in reservoir characterization. This article describes the implementation of a differential evolution optimization algorithm to carry out reservoir characterization by conditioning the reservoir simulation model to production data (history matching). We enhanced the differential evolution algorithm and developed the modified differential evolution optimization method with random localization. The proposed technique is simple-structured, robust, and computationally efficient. We also investigated the convergence characteristics of the algorithm in some synthetic oil reservoirs. In addition, the proposed method is... 

Simulation of the in-situ combustion process is one of the most complex simulations amongst other reservoir flow simulations. Accurate simulation of the process is critical to obtain a successful implementation of the in-situ combustion process. Several factors impact performance of the simulation of this process. First are all the numerical models used for different sub-processes, such as reactions, fluid phase behavior, heat loss to surrounding formations and fluid physical properties. In the previous numerical models of the in-situ combustion process, very simplified models were used for the phase behavior of the fluid. Recent studies show that the fluid phase behavior model has a great... 

Pore network modeling uses a network of pores connected by throats to model the void space of a porous medium and tries to predict its various characteristics during multiphase flow of various fluids. In most cases, a non-realistic regular lattice of pores is used to model the characteristics of a porous medium. Although some methodologies for extracting geologically realistic irregular networks from pore space images have been presented, these methods require some experimental data which are either unavailable or costly to obtain. 3-dimensional image or 2-dimensional SEM images are among these types of data. In this paper a new irregular lattice algorithm for the construction of these... 

A Real-Time Optimization (RTO) strategy incorporating the fuzzy sets theory is developed, where the problem constraints obtained from process considerations are treated in fuzzy environment. Furthermore, the objective function is penalized by a fuzzified form of the key process constraints. To enable using conventional optimization techniques, the resulting fuzzy optimization problem is then reformulated into a crisp programming problem. The crisp programming problem is solved using both Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) and Heuristic Random Optimization (HRO) techniques for comparison purposes. The proposed fuzzy RTO strategy is demonstrated via the Tennessee Eastman benchmark process,... 

Optimal well placement is a crucial step in efficient reservoir development process which significantly affects the productivity and economical benefits of an oil reservoir. However, it is a complex and challenging problem due to the different engineering, geological and economical variables involved. This leads to a very large number of potential scenarios that must be evaluated using numerical reservoir simulations. The key points in such an optimization process are using a fast function evaluation tool and development of an efficient and robust optimization algorithm that can find good solutions with a minimum required number of function evaluations. This study presents an approach that... 

Background: A new design for a methanol plant is proposed in which CO 2 addition, as one of the important parameters, is used to optimize the synthesis gas composition. An attempt has been made to assess the environmental features as well as the process operability of the proposed plant, in which the required CO 2 is provided from reformer flue gas. As a starting point, simulation of a conventional reference methanol case (RMC) and also the proposed green integrated methanol case (GIMC) are performed to obtain operational and kinetic parameters. In order to compare properly GIMC and RMC, the objective function is defined so that SynGas production, and thereby methanol production, in the GIMC... 

In this work, the goal is to find the optimum working point for intelligent wells that is equipped with down-hole chokes and producing from a multi-layer reservoir under pressure maintenance process. Two evolutionary optimization algorithms are used and results are compared from different points of view. Therefore, the differential evolution technique and genetic algorithm has been used in conjugation with a reservoir simulator. The overall optimization technique is applied to heterogeneous example problems involving smart and multi segment wells. Improvement of predicted performance, which is as high as 7% in one case is demonstrated for all of the examples studied  

Field evidence indicates that the thermal and chemical regimes in wellbore considerably affect the wellbore stability. This study presents a general coupled model for transport of solute, solvent and heat including their combined effects on the wellbore stability. Optimization of drilling fluid parameters is crucial for wellbore stability analysis particularly in high pressure-high temperature environments. The coupled effects of chemical potential and temperature gradients on fluid flow significantly change the pore pressure and stress around a borehole. The effects of various parameters such as mud weight, solute concentration gradient, shale properties, and temperature gradient on... 

Minimizing Hydrogen waste into fuel gas within the H2 network in a refinery is the objective function of an optimization problem in this paper. The superstructure obtained for a refinery wide concept, is first solved and validated for literature cases, then is reduced by heuristic rules, based on engineering judgment. The reduced superstructure contains all simulation procedures of pseudo-components definitions, fine tunings of all unit operations to reach actual operating conditions, reactions characterization, linear and nonlinear equalities and inequalities as system constraints. The set of governing equations are solved with Genetic Algorithm. Based on this optimization, in an Iranian... 

Natural convective heat transfer of Fe3O4/ethylene glycol nanofluids around the platinum wire as a heater in the absence and presence of the high electric field was investigated, numerically. The control volume finite element method was employed for the numerical simulation. Effects of the flow model, the volume fraction of nanoparticles, Rayleigh number, and the electric field intensity on the natural heat transfer coefficient (NHTC) of nanofluid were studied. Simulation results of single-phase and two-phase flow models showed that the two-phase model could better predict experimental data than the single-phase model due to take into account the velocity of each phase in the mixture. The... 

Presence of fracture roughness and occurrence of nonlinear flow complicate fluid flow through rock fractures. This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative study on the effects of fracture wall surface roughness on flow behavior using direct flow simulation on artificial fractures. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of roughness on linear and nonlinear flow through rock fractures. Therefore, considering fracture roughness to propose models for the linear and nonlinear flow parameters seems to be necessary. In the current report, lattice Boltzmann method is used to numerically simulate fluid flow through different fracture realizations. Flow simulations are conducted over a... 

Natural convective heat transfer of Fe3O4/ethylene glycol nanofluids around the platinum wire as a heater in the absence and presence of the high electric field was investigated, numerically. The control volume finite element method was employed for the numerical simulation. Effects of the flow model, the volume fraction of nanoparticles, Rayleigh number, and the electric field intensity on the natural heat transfer coefficient (NHTC) of nanofluid were studied. Simulation results of single-phase and two-phase flow models showed that the two-phase model could better predict experimental data than the single-phase model due to take into account the velocity of each phase in the mixture. The... 

The behaviour of an industrial refrigeration cycle with refrigerant propane has been investigated by the exergy method. An natural gas liquid recovery unit with its refrigeration cycle has been simulated to prepare the exergy analysis. Using a typical actual work input value; the exergetic efficiency of the refrigeration cycle is determined to be 26.51 % indicating a great potential for improvements. The obtained simulation results reveal that the exergetic efficiencies of the air cooler(s) and chilling sections get the lowest rank among the other compartments of refrigeration cycle. Refrigeration calculations have been carried out through the analysis of T-S and P-H diagrams where... 

During power system restoration, it is necessary to check the phase angle between two buses before closing circuit breakers to connect a line between them. A novel approach for reducing large standing phase angle (SPA) based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) is presented in this paper. The proposed approach starts with a state estimation on Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) data measurements and considering power system operation and angular stability constraints, seeks an optimal control action scenario for reducing SPA. Since these constraints are evaluated based on WAMS data, the presented approach is considerably high speed and accurate. As an optimization problem, objective function of the...