Multiport Selector Valve (MSV)

[_1angelia23]

Dear engineers,

We are in the FEED stage of designing a facility to produce 50 KBOPD. We have 6 well pads to achieve this production. Each well pad is with an oil gathering manifold. The consultant recommends the manifolds be provided with a multiport selector valves, comprising a housing with many production inlets, allowing for the diversion and testing of fluid from any individual line through a rotating plug, while the remaining lines continue to flow to a common group outlet instead using a conventional manifolds, which includes separate production and test headers. The justification of Consultant for using multiport selector valve is that they require less space, reduce manual operation and human error

In all our facilities, we use a conventional manifold instead of a multiselector manifold since our current and future facilities are onshore ones so there is no issue with space

Is there anyone here with experience in multiport selector valves? and Which manifold is preferred and has better availability? is it coventional or multiselector one If you could provide me with documents explaining these valves, because I have been looking for documents about them and I have not been finding any information, only simple product bulletins.


Thank you in advance.

 

[LittleInch]

I get it now. So the valve main body essentially is your manifold and the the centre turntable runs to the smaller central pipe off to the test separator or whatever.

They use less valves for sure as well.

The Fisher site gives more information. https://www.emerson.com/documents/a...-multiport-flow-selector-valve-en-4261162.pdf

They are not commonplace I suspect and my issue would be with the seals and how long they last as you move from port to port plus it means you need to run through a test separator all the time or have one inlet spare to "park" the divertor line so all flow goes to the main outlet.

they look pretty neat, but would be interesting to see the price comparison. I would put these in the same space as pigging valves - works for some lines and companies, but do they make a significant difference?. I suspect not.

 

[georgeverghese]

Stay away from these multiport selector valves ( 3 way , 4 way, 5 way etc) , particularly in this service where sand in the production fluids can tear up the soft teflon internals. There is no telling where the fluid will go to when these valves leak internally.

 

[_1angelia23]

I get it now. So the valve main body essentially is your manifold and the the centre turntable runs to the smaller central pipe off to the test separator or whatever.

They use less valves for sure as well.

The Fisher site gives more information. https://www.emerson.com/documents/a...-multiport-flow-selector-valve-en-4261162.pdf

They are not commonplace I suspect and my issue would be with the seals and how long they last as you move from port to port plus it means you need to run through a test separator all the time or have one inlet spare to "park" the divertor line so all flow goes to the main outlet.

they look pretty neat, but would be interesting to see the price comparison. I would put these in the same space as pigging valves - works for some lines and companies, but do they make a significant difference?. I suspect not.

Thank you so much Littlench. One of the justifications for using is that they are with less cost comparing to conventional manifold as consultant claims, i agree with all what you said. I hope other members involve in this thread to add more information.. some engineers do not recommend them especially from operational point of view..

 

[_1angelia23]

Stay away from these multiport selector valves ( 3 way , 4 way, 5 way etc) , particularly in this service where sand in the production fluids can tear up the soft teflon internals. There is no telling where the fluid will go to when these valves leak internally.

Thank you george, you have raised an important point about the service with sand

 

[_1angelia23]

@shvet , if you can share with us your point of view. l am waiting other members to join this thread.

 

[shvet]

Look, I am not really a proper person for these upstream issues. I have got experience in downstream, and a bit in midstream, but not really anything upstream, whether onshore or offshore.

If I would be in your shoes, I would reject that consultant's proposal. As I understood your posts, the sample points are distributed accross a process area (sorry I do not know the correct words). My concern is that a multiport valve, even though it might seem and be great both, leads to a multiple long stagnant sections of upstream piping.

Personally, I have only negative experience with a stagnant flow especially in a such challenging fluids like upstram deals with. Based on my own and my mates&colleagues' experiences they have been sharing with me, I strive to avoid stagnant flow whenever possible. In this case, you can avoid it by swapping that single multiport valve for five regular valves, placed on right at the sampling points.

Definetly, cost savings are great, and reducing human efforts&errors is even greater. No doubts. But consultant's scope is to propose/improve while the designer's scope is to take the responsibility for the consequences.

What happens when that small, pressurized piping starts leaking in five years? How are you going to inspect and control the condition of those multiple small-bore pipings? What's the real service life and failure probability of that piping (importnant - not a nominated one!)? 20 years? How are you going to guarantee such piping will work during a 18th or 19th year in operation? What will happen with such piping when the process conditions will exceed slightly the designed ones?

What will happen when the multiseat starts to leak? Will a stagnant low pressure system be pressurized by a high pressure one? Are impurities by a high pressure fluid to a low pressure one make the sample unrepresentative? And how to identify that a sample became unrepresentative?

When you handle a demi-water, or steam, or industrial gases the stagnant flow and multi-sampling are not an issue. And even for those cases a multiport panel is used instead of a multiport valve.
When you handle a corrosive, toxic, and explosive suimulteneously environment on one side and a cheap and common steel on the other side... you can, but you should not.

Hope this helps. Like I said, I'm not an upstream person.

 

[_1angelia23]

Look, I am not really a proper person for these upstream issues. I have got experience in downstream, and a bit in midstream, but not really anything upstream, whether onshore or offshore.

If I would be in your shoes, I would reject that consultant's proposal. As I understood your posts, the sample points are distributed accross a process area (sorry I do not know the correct words). My concern is that a multiport valve, even though it might seem and be great both, leads to a multiple long stagnant sections of upstream piping.

Personally, I have only negative experience with a stagnant flow especially in a such challenging fluids like upstram deals with. Based on my own and my mates&colleagues' experiences they have been sharing with me, I strive to avoid stagnant flow whenever possible. In this case, you can avoid it by swapping that single multiport valve for five regular valves, placed on right at the sampling points.

Definetly, cost savings are great, and reducing human efforts&errors is even greater. No doubts. But consultant's scope is to propose/improve while the designer's scope is to take the responsibility for the consequences.

What happens when that small, pressurized piping starts leaking in five years? How are you going to inspect and control the condition of those multiple small-bore pipings? What's the real service life and failure probability of that piping (importnant - not a nominated one!)? 20 years? How are you going to guarantee such piping will work during a 18th or 19th year in operation? What will happen with such piping when the process conditions will exceed slightly the designed ones?

What will happen when the multiseat starts to leak? Will a stagnant low pressure system be pressurized by a high pressure one? Are impurities by a high pressure fluid to a low pressure one make the sample unrepresentative? And how to identify that a sample became unrepresentative?

When you handle a demi-water, or steam, or industrial gases the stagnant flow and multi-sampling are not an issue. And even for those cases a multiport panel is used instead of a multiport valve.
When you handle a corrosive, toxic, and explosive suimulteneously environment on one side and a cheap and common steel on the other side... you can, but you should not.

Hope this helps. Like I said, I'm not an upstream person.

Thank you so much , shvet. I will take them into consideration. As l know stagnant flow could also happen in conventional manifold If the test header is not in use for an extended period, the fluid inside can become stagnant.
If you can clarify how that happens in Multi port selector valves!

 

[LittleInch]

Part of my concern would be how exactly those seals work. A test separator often works at a higher pressure than the other lines so that there is something spare to co mingle the output back into the main production line. Plus sometimes they back the well up to see how it rains to flow versus THTP.

So the is a pressure difference across this sliding seal.

To repair that valve you will need to take all 6 wells out for a period. Production won't like that and any savings can vanish. If it jams then what do you do? Stop testing? I would try one out in say two Wells and see how it performs in practice. Anything new is a risk. Is the benefit worth the risk?

Your call.

 

[shvet]

If you can clarify how that happens in Multi port selector valves!

I am not familiar with a multiport valves concept in the upstream industry.
Given the Emerson's doc shared by LittleInch the stagnant flow is not an issue.
I would address to the reliability of the multiseat on the figure 3. This detail:
(1) looks less robust than a seat of a conventional gate valve and prone to failure, and
(2) failure leads to all 7 wells to be shut down and isolated to inspect and fix it while a conventional manifold does not.
In addition to above I would not rely on the multiport selector. The idea is there is no mean to identify which port is actually selected while the opposite is valid for a conventional manifold. The shutoff valves, a manifold is equipped with, are on-off type and the selecting concept is not applicable to e.g. a gate valve, therefore there is no risk of a selector failure. Gate valves are able to be closed or opened and a worker has no change to confuse how those work at the every moment.

The ideas above are an amateur guessing. Anyway all these issues shall be tested and accepted by the industry to reveal should those be considered or ignored.