The Design of New Soft Sensors Based on PCA and a Neural Network for Parameters Estimation of a Petroleum Reservoir

Abstract

A new set of soft sensors is presented based on principal component analysis (PCA) and artificial neural network (ANN) methodologies for parameters estimation of a petroleum reservoir. The crude diagrams of reservoir parameters provide valuable evaluation for petrophysical parameters. These parameters, however, are usually difficult to measure due to limitations on cost reliability considerations, inappropriate instrument maintenance, and sensor failures. PCA is utilized to develop new soft sensors to incorporate reliability and prediction capabilities of ANN. For this purpose, a PCA model is derived to reconstruct a parameter from other reservoir parameters using their redundancy relations. The developed soft sensors are applied to reconstruct parameters of Marun reservoir located in Ahwaz, Iran, by utilizing the available geophysical well log data. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid PCA-NN algorithm is able to reveal a better performance than the PCA and the conventional back propagation–based NNs.