Model development and validation of an industrial natural gas well production network

Abstract

A transient state-space non-linear model is developed for a natural gas production network fed from multiple gas wellheads. The state-space model is developed by making use of the spectral element method for pipeline spatial discretization. Wellhead models are integrated into the pipeline models by making use of suitable boundary conditions based on the characteristic compatibility method. The models are validated against a large scale natural gas well production network. The validation shows that the model has a good prediction performance based on a low normalized root mean square error of at most 5.08% and a high Pearson correlation coefficient with measured plant data of at least 0.94. The good prediction response of the developed transient models make them suitable for use in model-based optimal control of natural gas well production networks. The resulting dynamic model can be easily adapted to a gas network of any configuration due to its modular form.