A self-adaptive deep learning algorithm for accelerating multi-component flash calculation

In this paper, the first self-adaptive deep learning algorithm is proposed in details to accelerate flash calculations, which can quantitatively predict the total number of phases in the mixture and related thermodynamic properties at equilibrium for realistic reservoir fluids with a large number of components under various environmental conditions. A thermodynamically consistent scheme for phase equilibrium calculation is adopted and implemented at specified moles, volume and temperature, and the flash results are used as the ground truth for training and testing the deep neural network. The critical properties of each component are considered as the input features of the neural network and the final output is the total number of phases at equilibrium and the molar compositions in each phase. Two network structures are well designed, one of which transforms the input of various numbers of components in the training and the objective fluid mixture into a unified space before entering the productive neural network. “Ghost components” are defined and introduced to process the data padding work in order to modify the dimension of input flash calculation data to meet the training and testing requirements of the target fluid mixture. Hyperparameters on both two neural networks are carefully tuned in order to ensure the physical correlations underneath the input parameters are preserved properly through the learning process. This combined structure can make our deep learning algorithm to be self-adaptive to the change of input components and dimensions. Furthermore, two Softmax functions are used in the last layer to enforce the constraint that the summation of mole fractions in each phase is equal to 1. An example is presented that the flash calculation results of a 8-component Eagle Ford oil is used as input to estimate the phase equilibrium state of a 14-component Eagle Ford oil. The results are satisfactory with very small estimation errors. The capability of the proposed deep learning algorithm is also verified that simultaneously completes phase stability test and phase splitting calculation. Remarks are concluded at the end to provide some guidance for further research in this direction, especially the potential application of newly developed neural network models.