TABLE OF CONTENTS Modeling has been used for a very long time for the design and for improved operation of gas processing and transmission facilities. The use of steady-state models is universally accepted in all stages of the design and operation of gas processing plants. Dynamic simulation has been used for a long time, but rigorous first principles dynamic simulation has been confined to use by specialists and control engineers were using models based on transfer functions that were incapable of representing the nonlinearities in systems and the discontinuities in start-up cases, for example. Only since the late 1990s has dynamic simulation become a more generally accepted tool to be used by process engineers and control engineers alike. The software available today enables process engineers with some process control knowledge and control engineers with some process knowledge to build dynamic models fairly easily. The constraint to using dynamic simulation is no longer that dynamic simulation is difficult to employ, but rather that the implementation time for a dynamic model is in the order of two to four times as long as the time needed to implement a steady-state model. Frequently a consultant is employed to develop the model and one or more engineers of an operating company or engineering company would use the model to run the needed studies.
This chapter discusses the areas of application of dynamic process modeling and modeling considerations, both general and for specific equipment used frequently in gas processing plants. The use of dynamic models in...
