Modelling and Dynamic Simulation of a Real Crude Oil Offshore Plant Using Aspen HYSYS®

In the offshore crude oil process, water separation has a significant impact on quality improvement.Moreover, the lower the oil content in the residual stream, the less treatment is needed to fulfil specifications.Herein, the use of simulation has become an important tool to achieve a better understanding of the process.However, considering that the petrochemical plant is subjected to extreme time varying operating conditions, which affects the separation train; this poses a challenge to obtain a realistic simulation model.This work presents our original dynamic simulation of a complete crude oil separation unit using Aspen HYSYS ® environment.The inlet feed is characterised as a heavy crude oil and different pieces of equipment are carefully designed according to real process parameters.Furthermore, the impact on variations in water content and irregular flows, known as slug flow occurrence, is analysed.Finally, to validate the accuracy of the simulation, operating temperatures, pressures for the separators, and the main flows of the process are compared with actual data.