On 23 September DTU hosted the meeting of the Copenhagen section of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). The meeting was organized by Center for Energy Resources Engineering, whose Faculty associate professor Alexander Shapiro (DTU Chemical and Biochemical Engineering) represents DTU at the Board of the SPE Copenhagen section. Pictures from the meeting
The Society of Petroleum Engineers is a worldwide organization accounting for several hundred thousand members. It is enormously active, organizing several ten conferences and workshops every month and publishing a number of engineering research journals, with a collection of SPE papers amounting to over hundred thousand. The Copenhagen SPE section involves representatives of all the most important petroleum companies operating in Denmark. At the DTU it has created an active Student Chapter amounting to ca. 110 members (the number is growing every year). Collaboration between the Chapter and the “adult” SPE makes it possible to establish regular contacts between the students and the professionals, which is very important for the students’ professional development and, eventually, for their future employment.
The SPE Copenhagen section, among other activities, organizes monthly SPE meetings. Once a year such a meeting is traditionally hosted by the DTU. This is the way for the DTU researchers to present their recent developments to the industry. The number of participants of the meetings is growing, this time being ca. 60 industrial participants and ca. 60 participants from the DTU. While the industrial participants represented most companies forming the Danish petroleum industry, the participants from the DTU involved researchers and student members of the DTU SPE student chapter.
The meeting traditionally started with refreshments, informal get-together, and the poster session organized by the DTU students and researchers. This time the SPE Student chapter organized a poster contest, the winners of which have been awarded by an opportunity to participate at the annual SPE student conference “East meets West” taking place every year in Poland. The posters were evaluated by three volunteers from industry, Hans Horikx (Maersk Oil), Jonathan Hasting (Maersk Oil), and Anders Norman (Hess). Three Master students, Thomas Bruun Bertelsen, Finlay Bertram and Hadise Baghooee were selected as first, second, and third place in the poster contest.
The main part of the meeting consisted of the three presentations of the DTU researchers related to the different directions within petroleum engineering science. Associate professor John Bagterp Jørgensen (CERE, DTU Compute) presented his Economic Model Predictive Control to the optimization of the development of a petroleum reservoir. Ph.D. Student Konstantina Katika (CERE, DTU Civil Engineering) presented application of the nuclear magnetic resonance to studies of the saturated porous media. Postdoctoral researcher Teresa Regueira Muniz (CERE, DTU Chemistry + Chemical and Biochemical Engineering) discussed a new automated equipment for studies of the properties of petroleum fluids under elevated pressures and temperatures, which is important for the future development of the Danish petroleum resources.
The presentations were followed by dinner, during which the Director of the newly established Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre Dr. Bo Cerup-Simonsen described the structure and the perspectives of the new Centre. This presentation was followed by active and informal discussion.
Abstracts 2014
John Bagterp Jørgensen has a PhD in Chemical Engineering. He is a co-founder of several start-up companies within simulation, control and optimisation. Currently, he is an associate professor at DTU Compute (Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science) and a faculty member of CERE (Center for Energy Resources and Engineering). His research interests are within computational methods for optimisation based control with applications to financial systems, medical systems, process systems, and oil production. His methods and software are used in several industrial applications.
Scientific Computing for Optimization and Control of Oil Reservoirs
In this presentation we illustrate the role of scientific computing and feedback control for optimisation of the operation of oil reservoirs to maximise their net present value despite the significant uncertainties present. We introduce optimisation based control and model predictive control under the paradigm of Economic Model Predictive Control. We demonstrate the mechanism of Economic Model Predictive Control to improve the oil recovery and net present value of oil reservoirs using simulated oil reservoirs. Finally, we describe how we intend to implement and evaluate Economic Model Predictive Control for real oil fields in collaboration with our industrial partners in the OPTION project.
Teresa Regueira Muniz finished her PhD in the research group of Thermophysical Properties Laboratory in the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 2013. The topic of her PhD was the high pressure thermophysical behaviour of reference and new lubricants. She got expertise on experimental determination of density in broad ranges of temperature and pressure, determination of solubility through isochoric and visual synthetic techniques and study of the high pressure rheological behavior of lubricants. Since August 2013 is a post-doc in CERE (DTU) working on the NextOil project on the experimental determination of the physical properties and phase equilibrium for high pressure high temperature reservoir fluids.
New Experimental Facility for High Pressure High Temperature PVT Study at DTU
High pressure and high temperature (HPHT) reservoirs are at the frontier of current oil and gas production. Development of these reservoirs requires rock and fluid properties at the extreme pressure and temperature conditions. Within the framework of the NextOil project, a HPHT PVT system up to 200°C and 150 MPa has been recently established at the CERE laboratory (DTU), making it possible to obtain high accuracy thermophysical and phase equilibrium data for both well-defined systems and real reservoir fluids. The system can carry out not only routine PVT study but also special ones like measurement of Joule-Thomson coefficients and study of asphaltene precipitation when coupled with additional modules. We will present the experimental design and the main functions of this system. The data from this PVT system is expected to be used for specific HPHT reservoirs as well as for improving the generic thermodynamic models for HPHT applications.
Konstantina Katika is a PhD student of Petroleum Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. She received her Master of Science degree in Geotechnical Engineering and Master of Engineering degree in Civil Engineering from University of Patras, Greece.
Her PhD project focuses on petrophysical and rock mechanical tests to identify the effect of injected water of varying salinity and ionic composition on the physical properties of rocks. More specifically, low field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), elastic wave propagation, and electrical resistivity of chalk and greensand. The research aim is to formulate proposals for pilot water flooding in Danish North Sea oil reservoirs.
Low field NMR of fluid saturated Porous Media
The presentation will be focused on applications of the Low field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) in petroleum engineering. NMR spectrometry is commonly used to determine petrophysical properties of reservoir rocks. NMR spectrometry may determine the presence and quantities of different fluids (water, oil, and gas). Low field NMR may also be used to estimate porosity and pore size distributions of rocks and of other porous media, and thus, in many cases, to predict permeability. Moreover, this technique can be applied to illustrate changes such as precipitation and dissolution within the pore space of the medium due to injection of different fluids. In the laboratory, NMR spectrometry can also be used to quantify the recovered oil and water fraction during water flooding experiments.
Bo Cerup-Simonsen started 1 July as a Director for the new Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre based at DTU.
Bo Cerup-Simonsen has a background both in the world of research and in the industry. He holds a MSc in Mechanical Engineering from DTU, has made Ph.D. there and afterwards was employed at DTU from 1997 to 2003. Afterwards he has been employed in the industry for more than ten years – most recently, as a Director for Maersk Maritime Technology. This was a highly specialized competence center of the Maersk Group that delivered the design and technology of the world largest container ship, Triple-E. DTU and Blue MBA education at CBS has relied upon his qualification as a bridge-builder between research and industry, and he has participated at the governmental development team for The Blue Denmark