FluidCom™ Chemical Injection Flow Controller (INTERRUMPIDO)

Although some parts of chemical injection processes in conventional systems have been automated, the majority of them are still manually operated. In the systems that are manually operated, injection flow rates are unstable and need to be adjusted whenever deviations are found. The frequency of the adjustments depends on oil wells’ ambient conditions such as pressure, temperature, viscosity and specific gravity, and there are cases where adjustments are needed every few hours. Also, the conventional systems consist of multiple components. The more components they have, the more maintenance that is required. Such manual interventions result in huge labor costs.

There are mainly two types of chemical injection systems adopted by oil and gas companies. One type of system injects chemicals directly from a pump, controlling discharge rates by adjusting the stroke length of the pump. The other type of system uses Injection Rate Control Device (IRCD) to regulate injection rates.
In many cases, discharge rates or injection rates are set by manual manipulation. However, the discharge rate often drifts from the set rate, which is affected by changes in pressure at the injection point, chemical viscosity or ambient temperature. When chemical injection rates go underdosing, it may cause tremendous detriment to assets. Consequently, most operators tend to set the discharge rate 10 to 20 percent higher than the stipulated rate to prevent being underdosed, which leads to excessive chemical cost.

In order to maintain production efficiency, operators on offshore platforms work under harsh environmental conditions. However, some challenges need to be solved. These include reducing long working hours in high-risk situations as well as having operators do multi-week shifts on offshore platforms. 

1. Autonomous Valve Control

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Providing power to the heater makes the outer tube expand longitudinally moving the seat in relation to the pin enabling increased flow. Reducing power to the heater will make the outer tube retract and decrease the flow.
Temperature sensor (T1) measures the fluid temperature on the inlet prior to entering the heated section,
Temperature sensor (T2) measures the fluid temperature exiting the heated section.
The amount of thermal energy absorbed by the flowing fluid through the device allows the calculation of the Thermal Mass Flow. Thermal Mass Flow is calculated using the following equation:

From this equation, FluidCom’s internal control algorithm will control the heater power, and in turn control the fluid flow rate.

2. Virtually Maintenance Free with Its Self-Cleaning Mechanism

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• If clogging is identified, FluidCom will automatically increase the flow rate opening the outlet valve fully to allow for debris/deposits to be flushed over the valve seat.
• As shown in the figure typically the auto clean function is shown by a spike in the flow rate and then a gradual return to the pre-determined chemical injection rate.
• The Self-cleaning functionality found in the FluidCom resolves the most common problem of plugging in a conventional valve which leads to periodic mechanical maintenance.

3. Integrated into One Module/Minimal MechanicalParts

4. Independent of Pressure and Temperature Fluctuations

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e.g.
Ideal flow rate: 15 L/h
Chemical cost: 5 USD/L
Assumed that your chemical injection system is overdosing chemicals 20 % more than the set flow rate.

Conventional: 15 × 1.2 (+ 20 % accuracy) = 18 L
FluidCom: 15 × 1.05 (+ 5 % accuracy) = 15.75 L/h

Chemical Cost reduction:
( 18 - 15.75 ) × 24 × 365 × 5 USD = 98,550 USD per injection point

* It depends on the process condition.
* This is only for 1 injection point.

5. Reduced Footprint/Size/Weight