Black oil delumping, also known as a stream conversion method, converts a black oil wellstream into a compositional wellstream. This procedure ensures consistent flowrate allocations and monitoring of well’s performance. This method requires volumetric oil and gas flowrates given in well-test reports, an equation of state model, and additional black oil information reported in the Well Test, PVT Analysis, and Gas Chromatographic Analysis. This work proposes an improvement on the method to convert black oil data into compositional wellstream. The method’s performance was tested using data of three wells of a platform from an offshore oil field. This improvement significantly increased the accuracy of the method by decreasing the maximum percentage relative error from 16.50% to 4.44% when comparing the calculated and measured oil and gas properties for Well 1, for example. The method also preserves the gas and oil ratio reported in the well tests.
An appropriate techno-economic assessment of biorefineries is essential for consolidating a bio-based economy. Herein, the effects of scale and seasonality on the design of a sugarcane to ethanol biorefinery were assessed using an extensive process simulation and economic modeling methodology. Four sub-processes were simulated for eight different scales: ethanol from sugarcane, ethanol dehydration to ethylene, ethylene to mono ethylene glycol (MEG), and electricity and steam generation from bagasse. Models for capital expenditure and minimum selling price versus product capacity were developed for ethanol, bio-ethylene, and MEG. The integrated biorefinery was analyzed for 200 kt/yr and 440 kt/yr bio-ethylene capacities, considering three regions of Brazil: Northeast, South-central, and São Paulo/Paraná. Seasonality effects were mitigated by establishing a storage park alongside the biorefinery. The results indicated that the selling price of bio-MEG must be at least 20–30% higher than the fossil-based MEG to ensure competition. The 440 kt/yr biorefinery located in the South-central region had the lowest bio-MEG selling price, however, it required an outsized distillery. Moreover, scale and seasonality had a significant impact on the competitiveness of the biorefinery. The bio-MEG selling price might vary by up to 22%, depending on the specific combination of these factors.