Optimization methods for pipeline transportation of natural gas with variable specific gravity and compressibility

In this paper, the problem of flow maximization in pipeline systems for transmission of natural gas is addressed. We extend previously suggested models by incorporating the variation in pipeline flow capacities with gas specific gravity and compressibility. Flow capacities are modeled as functions of pressure, compressibility and specific gravity by the commonly-used Weymouth equation, and the California Natural Gas Association method is used to model compressibility as a function of specific gravity and pressure. The sources feeding the transmission network do not necessarily supply gas with equal specific gravity. In our model, it is assumed that when different flow streams enter a junction point, the specific gravity of the resulting flow is a weighted average of the specific gravities of entering flows. We also assume the temperature to be constant, and the system to be in steady state. Since the proposed model is non-convex, and global optimization hence can be time consuming, we also propose a heuristic method based on an iterative scheme in which a simpler NLP model is solved in each iteration. Computational experiments are conducted in order to assess the computability of the model by applying a global optimizer, and to evaluate the performance of the heuristic approach. When applied to a wide set of test instances, the heuristic method provides solutions with deviations less than 10% from optimality, and in many instances turns out to be exact. We also report several experiments demonstrating that letting the compressibility and the specific gravity be global constants can lead to significant errors in the estimates of the total network capacity. Copyright Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa 2013