Oil and gas (hydrocarbon) processing facilities commonly combine raw materials from multiple sources into one commingled stream which serves as the inlet stream for the production system. As the commingled stream proceeds through the production system, it is subjected to various process operations. The amount of each type of output product produced from the commingled stream depends not only on the composition of the commingled stream but also on process operations performed and the pressure and temperature conditions during the operations.
Source streams from various owners will often be combined to form the inlet stream that enters the hydrocarbon processing facility. The standard Production Accounting (PA) method of allocating the output products from processing facilities back to source streams is the Inlet Ratio (IR) method, although some variations of the IR method are also used. The IR method assigns output components from processing in proportion to the individual stream rate and compositional content. The IR method uses the source stream composition and rate of flow to arrive at the proportion of an individual liquid component volume or amount from the processing facility to be assigned to that source stream. If Fi is the saleable quantity of component “i” produced from a processing facility, then the method is described byFi=Σj=1nqj·cij where qj is the quantity of the inlet stream “j” of n streams and cij is the fraction of component “i” in the inlet stream “j”. If Fij is the allocation of the component i to stream j, then the allocation is simply:
            F      ij              F      i        =                    q        j            ·              c        ij                            ∑                  j          =          1                n            ⁢                          ⁢                        q          j                ·                  c          ij                    
While the methods heretofore fulfill their respective, particular objectives and requirements, they do not provide an equitable distribution of the actual output product. As such there exists a need for a method of equitably distributing the actual output product, which substantially departs from the prior art, and in doing so provides a method primarily developed for the purpose of equitably distributing the actual output product.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds