New Challenges in Advanced Process Control in Petroleum Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

Advanced process control (APC) is a proven technique to guide and optimize field operations in the petroleum industry. APC provides a leading solution to coordinate surface facilities and in-situ production during reservoir development, which significantly reduces capital and operational costs and lowers process instabilities. However, with challenges in the exploration of unconventional reservoirs and the development of new surface facilities, process control becomes more complex and unpredictive, limiting its success from wellbores to refinery. The complexity mainly lies in reservoir uncertainty, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applicability, time delay, optimization algorithm availability, and proper variable selection. In-depth theoretical advancements and case studies are thus needed to better utilize APC in practice.

This Special Issue on “New Challenges in Advanced Process Control in Petroleum Engineering” seeks high-quality studies focusing on theoretical advancements and field applications of APC in the oil and gas industry. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in reservoir development;
• Studies of mechanisms of fluid flow in reservoirs and their implications for performance optimization;
• Model predictive control (MPC) to optimize production and reduce costs;
• Real-time optimization (RTO) from underground to surface;
• Economic evaluation and optimization based on APC.

Dr. Sheng Yang
Dr. Jinze Xu
Prof. Dr. Desheng Zhou
Dr. Xing Hao
Prof. Dr. Zhangxing John Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Processes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.