Fig. 1 is a diagram of the control loop that uses a centrifugal
pump to both hydraulic decouple inflow surges into the surge tank
and also decrease inflow to the free water heated knockout (FWO) as
the oil/water interface level increases. When our client proposed
this loop, we were concerned. Based on the different mathematical
input/output (transforms) relationships (Figs. 2 and 3) between the
two-level processes, there could be loop instability in trying to
calculate a reasonable setpoint for the bypass flow loop. While the
surge tank's large volume capacity added to stability of the loop,
the small heated vessel had a small capacity and high throughput.
Theoretical Laplace trans
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