Polymer Outage Strategy for On-Going Polymer Injection Operation in the Sultanate of Oman

Polymer outage (or polymer injection unavailability) is undesirable but also inevitable. When it happens, the question is how to respond to it to minimize its adverse impact on the production. This paper presents the rationale for generating a polymer outage strategy to operate a polymer flood field in the southern area of the Sultanate of Oman. The work presented here is based on field performance and analytical analysis. The diagnostic plots were created from 10 years of polymer flood field response and were used for this operating decision. The pros and cons of two scenarios were discussed. The selected operational strategy is to minimize the short falls of polymer outage. The strategy was implemented in the field. Simultaneous injection and production pause (SIPP) is recommended for the full field polymer outage. It minimizes the impact on polymer incremental oil and hence less deferment. Calibrated with the actual results, analytical method is used to determine when to shut down and whether a short of buffer period of water can be tolerated before SIPP is carried out. The polymer literature focus on polymer mechanisms, modeling, project initiation and implementation but no paper discusses the operational strategy on how to respond to field polymer outages. This paper shares our operational learnings and the field results of various polymer operation modes on polymer incremental oil. The learning from this field may be of interest to other operators who are planning or currently implementing polymer flood in their fields.

Learning an Optimal Operational Strategy for Service Life Extension of Gear Wheels with Double Deep Q Networks

One failure mechanism of gear wheels is pitting. If the gear wheel is case hardened, pitting degradation dominates normally at one tooth only. All the other teeth are still intact at the standardized end of life criterion of 4 % pitting area based on the total tooth area. Using an operational strategy that was developed at the Institute of Machine Components, the service life of gear wheels can be extended by a local stress reduction at the weakest tooth. This is accomplished by applying an adapted torque at the transmission input that shifts a minimum torque in the area of the pre-damaged, and thus, weakest tooth. Consequently, all remaining teeth with higher load bearing capacity are subjected to higher torque. Prerequisite for the described theoretical operational strategy is knowledge on pitting-size and -position. The detection of these properties in operation is not state of the art yet. In this work, only the gearbox vibration signal is known without explicit knowledge about the inside pitting. So the challenge is to determine the health for each individual tooth and to choose an optimal adapted torque based on this. This is especially difficult due to differing growth rates of pittings on one individual gear wheel. Hence, different pittings dominate over the service life, which results in the need of a continuous optimization of the torque control. Algorithms of Reinforcement Learning (RL) are particularly suitable for this challenge. In this branch of Machine Learning (ML), an agent interacts inside an environment and learns by getting rewards for taking actions at given states. In this study, the environment is a gearbox-simulation-model, the state is the current vibration signal, and the action is the chosen adapted torque. Thus, it is possible to let the algorithm learn the whole operational strategy, from online failure detection to an adapted torque at the transmission input. The results of this study show the theoretical feasibility of the operational strategy using Double Deep Q Networks as the RL Algorithm. The algorithm is able to learn a suitable reaction to pittings that increase linearly or progressively at an early stage and therefore delays their growth within the defined limits. Thus, the lifetime of the gearbox is extended while maintaining the same total power of the gearbox. As an outlook, the results will be examined for their sensitivity on several influencing factors in a further study. The wider view is to use this simulation on a test rig and validate the results.

The main aspects of choosing the enterprises' operating strategy

Retail trade occupies an important place in the economy of Ukraine, ensuring the sale of manufactured goods to end consumers. For retailers, it is important to achieve timeliness and reliability of services to meet customer needs, which can be achieved through the formation of operational strategy. The purpose of the article is to form a methodological approach to the development of operational strategy of retail enterprises, which is based on the requirements of corporate strategy, selected in accordance with the stage of the life cycle of the industry. The development of this methodological approach was carried out on the basis of Hill's model and system approach. As a result, a logical scheme of the process of developing an operational strategy is presented, which is specified by the list of input and output information. In order to determine the stage of the life cycle of the market of retail services in Ukraine, the eponymous concept of Porter was applied and the analysis was carried out according to the criteria: consumers and their behaviour, sales costs, changes in services, the nature of competition, profitability and found that the retail services market is growing. The method of observation, comparative and analytical method was used for the analysis, the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) was calculated on the basis of the data of the largest retail trade enterprises of Ukraine. As a result, it was found that the market of retail services in Ukraine is growing. With this in mind, an operational strategy for Ukrainian retailers has been proposed, which should aim to ensure the flexibility and variability of the operating system. The defined general direction of the operational strategy will allow to establish the content of decisions on the choice of operational processes, as well as the infrastructure to support them.

Validating collaborative practices for urban circular economy: the design perspective

The article presents the results of the research activity carried out within the framework of the European project H2020 REFLOW, which aims to build an integrated approach for the development of innovative participatory practices dedicated to urban circular metabolisms. As a result of the survey conducted on the application of collaborative models for the urban circular economy, it emerged that there is no shared operational strategy that can be adopted for the circular development of complex systems, such as cities. Based on this premise, this paper offers a new perspective on how to build and validate a transitional pathway for the development of circular cities through the adoption of a design-oriented approach that orchestrates different resources and capacities.