Regular Article
Study on the multi-objective optimization of reliability and operating cost for natural gas pipeline network
1
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, PR China
2
School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory of Pipeline Critical Technology and Equipment for Deepwater Oil & Gas Development, Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology, Beijing 102617, PR China
3
National Engineering Laboratory for Pipeline Safety/MOE Key Laboratory of Petroleum Engineering/Beijing Key Laboratory of Urban Oil and Gas Distribution Technology, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, PR China
4
School of Petroleum Engineering, Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming 525000, PR China
5
National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Company Ltd, Beijing 100034, PR China
* Corresponding author: wangp@bipt.edu.cn
Received:
19
November
2020
Accepted:
9
April
2021
The development of natural gas pipeline network towards larger scale and throughput has urged better reliability of the pipeline network to satisfy transportation requirement. Previously, studies of optimizing natural gas pipeline network have been mainly focused on reducing operating cost, with little concern on the reliability of pipeline network. For a natural gas pipeline network with a variety of components and complicated topology, a multi-objective optimization model of both reliability and operating cost is proposed in this study. Failure of each component and the state of pipeline network under failure conditions are taken into account, and minimum cut set method is employed to calculate the reliability of the pipeline network. The variables to be determined for the optimization objectives are the rotating speed of compressors and the opening of valves. Then the solving procedure of the proposed model is presented based on Decoupled Implicit Method for Efficient Network Simulation (DIMENS) method and NS-saDE algorithm. The validity of the optimization model is ascertained by its application on a complicated pipeline network. The results illustrate that the optimization model can depict the relative relationship between reliability and operating cost for different throughput, by which the operation scheme with both satisfying reliability and operating cost can be obtained. In addition, the customer reliability and the impact of the failure of each pipeline on the whole network can be evaluated quantitatively to identify the consumers and pipelines of maintenance priority. The pipeline network reliability can be improved through proper monitoring and maintenance of these consumers and pipelines.
© K. Jiao et al., published by IFP Energies nouvelles, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.