Proppant-Conveyor Automation System With Cascade Control in Hydraulic Fracturing

Abstract

Summary In this paper, a proppant-conveyor automation system is developed to automatically deliver proppant for hydraulic fracturing, which improves working conditions and reduces environmental pollution significantly. A cascade control is developed to reject disturbances and maintain the proppant level. The control consists of an inner-loop proportional-integral (PI) control for rejecting disturbances and an outer-loop PI control for maintaining the proppant level. A relay-feedback approach is adopted to tune the PI gains. Both simulation and hydraulic-fracturing-job testing results have validated reliability and practicality of the cascade control for the proppant-conveyor automation system.