Embedded Model Predictive Control for an Electric Submersible Pump on a Programmable Logic Controller

Abstract

Electric Submersible Pumps (ESPs) can be installed in oil wells to create artificial lift, in order to increase recovery from the reservoir, and boost the production rate. A Model Predictive Controller (MPC) for an ESP, based on linearized models, is developed and designed using SEPTIC (Statoil's in-house software tool for MPC), and implemented on a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). Automatic code generators have been utilized to generate an application-specific MPC controller in ANSI C code. Hardware-in-the-loop simulation results show that the control performance of the PLC implementation is comparable to the original SEPTIC controller.