Process Simulation and Optimization of Crude Oil Stabilization Scheme Using Aspen-HYSYS Software

In this time of energy crises, low production rate against the increasing demand of oil and gas production regularly hampers both domestic and industrial operations. In addition, safety hazards arising from explosion and increase in the cost of production due to pumping cavitation has pose a great challenge on offshore Floating Production Storage and Off-loading (FPSO) terminals. In view of the above, the design of a computer base model for the simulation and optimization of crude oil stabilization scheme is highly desirable. Aspen HYSYS software (version 8.4) was used for the simulation and optimization processes and the fluid package employed was Peng-Robinson. Operational data used for the simulation was obtained from the aforementioned terminal. The model was based on gas product and liquid product flows. The simulation was performed to optimize the stabilization unit by manipulating various process variables, which was subject to a Reid vapor pressure (RVP) of gasoline as the constraint. The process flow diagram of the system was successfully developed. Furthermore, the optimizer tool of Aspen HYSYS was used to obtain the optimum operating conditions of the process and Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) algorithm was employed. The results of the base and optimized cases were compared and analyzed. Economic consideration showed an improvement of 31.11% (i.e. N 42 billion) in net profit for the optimized case over the base case at optimal operating conditions. In addition, results showed that the effects of optimum feed conditions (flow rate, temperature and pressure) were between the ranges of of 6.0 e+03 to 8.0e+03 m 3 /h, 26 to 29 o C, and 1.65 to 1.8 MPa respectively Therefore, it has been shown that the developed Aspen HYSYS model of this research work can be used to represent, simulate and optimize a crude oil stabilization system successfully.