Abstract:

Heat exchangers (HX) and heat exchanger networks are frequently used for the purposes of recovery heat and carrying out process integration to reduce energy consumption. In Hải Thạch gas treatment and processing plant, HXs are involved in the separation ofliquid products (produced water and condensate) out of well fluid; stabilization of sale condensate and cooling the sale gas at the discharge of export gas compressors.As the efficiency of the HXs play an important role in the energy consumption, process control and platform safety, its performance must be tracked as precisely as possible in order to identify operational problems.This research presents a physical modeling approach for characterizing the performance of a Plate Type HX units with real-time operating parameters from Distributed Control System (DCS). This reliable monitoring method was available to enable production engineers to answer practical questions such as: what is the actual performance of the equipment at a give time of opertion? Which is the ideal moment to stop the operation and clean the heat exchangers? The result indicates that the excessive biological growth during certain period time could be identified using this effective method. On the other hand, this result was in accordance with the evidences of bioflouling when opening the Seawater Cooling Medium Exchangers