Most mature oil reservoirs or fields tend to perform below expectations, owing to
high level of associated gas production. This creates a sub-optimal performance
of the oil production surface facilities; increasing oil production specific
operating cost. In many scenarios oil companies flare/vent this gas. In addition
to oil production constraints, associated gas flaring and venting consists an
environmental disasters and economic waste. Significant steps are now being
devised to utilise associated gas using different exploitation techniques. Most of
the technologies requires large associated gas throughput.
However, small-scale associated gas resources and non-associated natural gas
reserves (commonly referred to as stranded gas or marginal field) remains
largely unexploited. Thus, the objective of this thesis is to evaluate techno-
economic of gas turbine engines for onsite electric power generation called gas-
to-wire (GTW) using the small-scaled associated gas resources. The range of
stranded flared associated gas and non-associated gas reserves considered is
around 10 billion to 1 trillion standard cubic feet undergoing production decline.
The gas turbine engines considered for power plant in this study are based on
simple cycle or combustion turbines. Simple cycle choice of power-plant is
conceived to meet certain flexibility in power plant capacity factor and
availability during production decline. In addition, it represents the basic power
plant module cable of being developed into other power plant types in future to
meet different local energy requirements.
This study developed a novel gas-to-wire techno-economic and risk analysis
framework, with capability for probabilistic uncertainty analysis using Monte
Carlo simulation (MCS) method. It comprises an iterative calculation of the
probabilistic recoverable reserves with decline module and power plant
thermodynamic performance module enabled by Turbomatch (an in-house
code) and Gas Turb® software coupled with economic risk modules with
@Risk® commercial software. This algorithm is a useful tool for simulating the
interaction between disrupted gas production profiles induced by production
decline and its effect on power plant techno-economic performance over
associated gas utilization economic life. Furthermore, a divestment and make-
up fuel protocol is proposed for management of gas turbine engine units to
mitigate economical underperformance of power plant regime experienced due
to production decline.
The results show that utilization of associated gas for onsite power generation is
a promising technology for converting waste to energy. Though, associated gas
composition can be significant to gas turbine performance but a typical Nigerian
associated gas considered is as good as a regular natural gas. The majority of
capital investment risk is associated with production decline both natural and
manmade. Finally, the rate of capital investment returns decreases with smaller
reserves.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CRANFIELD1/oai:dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk:1826/8625 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Anosike, Nnamdi Benedict |
| Contributors | Pilidis, Pericles |
| Publisher | Cranfield University |
| Source Sets | CRANFIELD1 |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or dissertation, Doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | © Cranfield University 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright owner. |
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