Model Predictive Control with Adaptive Strategy Applied to an Electric Submersible Pump in a Subsea Environment

An automatic control of Electric Submersible Pumps (ESPs), employed for artificial lift oil production, is desired in order to ensure safe operation while satisfying pump and well constraints. In this context, the use of an advanced control strategy, such as model predictive control (MPC), can be beneficial in order to deal with the process constraints, variables coupling and optimal operation. In this paper, a linear MPC strategy was applied to an ESP model in order to keep the pump inlet pressure in a desired reference value, minimizing the pump power and respecting the variables constraints. Model adaptation based on homotopic transition between models was proposed for plant nonlinear response regions broadening the range of control.