Advanced control of steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process

尽管对可再生能源和绿色能源的推动日益增长，但对化石燃料（例如石油）的需求仍然很高，并且预测有上升趋势。此外，在所有化石燃料中，随着各国寻求无煤，对石油的需求正在增加。然而，随着对石油需求的增加，加上世界几个经济体的高通货膨胀，石油生产成本也大幅上升。这种生产成本的激增，加上常规储量的缓慢消耗以及勘探和生产技术的进步，导致了非常规开采技术的诞生，包括蒸汽辅助重力泄油（SAGD）。蒸汽辅助重力泄油（SAGD）是用于从加拿大西部油砂中提取1.7万亿桶重油和超重油（沥青）的主要热采工艺之一。它涉及通过上部注入井将过热和约80%饱和蒸汽注入油砂储层，以使高粘度沥青流动。通过手动操纵蒸汽注入压力或速率以及流体的生产速率来提高生产率的当前商业技术已被证明是次优的，采收率在25%和50%之间。最近关于通过比例-积分微分（PID）控制和更先进的方法如模型预测控制（MPC）使该过程自动化的研究已经证明是对用于采油的蒸汽注入的开环方法的改进。该研究方案的主要重点是开发一种新的控制方案，以管理具有多个井对的井场，并通过自适应地调节蒸汽输送来最大化产量，以可靠但不受监督的方式根据当地地质和生产因素确定生产率。因此，将当今的“被动”储层井转变为“智能和主动”储层井，确保以最少的蒸汽用量获得最大的沥青采收率。工业合作伙伴Spartan Controls Ltd.是加拿大西部过程工业（包括油砂）中公认的过程控制、测量和自动化解决方案的领先供应商。他们的兴趣是通过这种合作应用开发的先进控制策略，以改善短期和长期生产，最大限度地减少蒸汽消耗，从而减少对环境的影响。

Although the push for renewable energy and green energy is growing by the day, the demand for fossil fuels, such as petroleum, is still very high and has an upward trending forecast. Furthermore, of all the fossil fuels, the demand for petroleum is increasing as countries look to be coal free. However, with increase in the demand for petroleum coupled with high inflation in several world economies, the cost of producing it has also gone up significantly. This surge in production cost, coupled with slowly depleting conventional reserves and advancement in exploration and production technology have led to the birth of unconventional recovery technique, including steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is one of the major thermal recovery processes used to extract the majority of the 1.7 trillion barrels of heavy and extra heavy oil (bitumen) from the oil sands of Western Canada. It involves, injecting superheated and around 80% saturated steam into the oil sands reservoir through an upper injection well to mobilize the highly viscous bitumen. Current commercial techniques to improve productivity by manual manipulation of steam injection pressure or rate and production rate of fluids have proved to be suboptimal, with recovery rates between 25 and 50%. Recent research on automating the process via Proportional-Integral Derivative (PID) control and more advanced methods like Model Predictive Control (MPC) , have proven to be an improvement over open loop methods of steam injection for oil recovery.Thus, the main focus of this research proposal is to develop a novel control scheme to manage a well pad with multiple well pairs and maximize production by adaptively adjusting steam delivery and production rate based on local geological and production factors in a reliable yet unsupervised manner. Thereby, transforming today's "passive" reservoir well into a "smart and proactive" one, ensuring maximum bitumen recovery with minimum usage of steam. The industrial partner, Spartan Controls Ltd. is the recognized leading provider of process control, measurement and automation solutions in the process industries in Western Canada, including oils sands. Their interest is to apply the developed advanced control strategies through this collaboration to improve short-term and long-term production, minimize steam consumption and consequently reduce environmental impact.