Embedded MPC Strategies for ESP-Lifted Oil Wells: Hardware-in-the-Loop Performance Analysis of Nonlinear and Robust Techniques

This paper proposes embedded model predictive control strategies for oil-production processes equipped with electric submersible pump (ESP) installations. The novelty of this paper is the robustness and computational performance analysis of the Robust Infinite-Horizon Model Predictive Controller (RIHMPC) and Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) strategies, which have not yet been documented by the oil and gas exploration and production literature. The proposed method to embed the control laws is flexible with different hardware and is based on automatic code generation, which facilitates the project workflow. Hardware-in-the-loop simulation cases were used to compare the performance of both control strategies embedded in the Teensy 4.1 microcontroller, using key indices for real applications. The results showed that the RIHMPC strategy is a very promising alternative for real-time operation in ESP-lifted oil wells, with overall performance similar to the NMPC controller, even in noisy and plant-model mismatch scenarios, and using only linear models in its formulation.