Short-term operation optimization for natural gas pipeline considering line-pack: A perspective of optimal transport

As a vital component in the energy industry, the natural gas pipeline has been attached great attention from scholars in recent years, with increasing research on its scheduling and management. Although a few studies discuss the controlling and optimization of the natural gas pipeline working scheme, the effect of line-pack has rarely been considered. Towards the difficulties and significance of considering line-pack in the working scheme optimization of natural gas pipeline, this work employed the optimal transport (OT) theory to transfer the optimization problem into two stages, where each stage can be solved with existing methods. To reform the short-term optimizing problem for pipeline controlling to an OT problem, the line-pack and dispatching plan were both represented by the quantity of gas transported, while the unit costs of transport were determined with the working states of compressor stations. A method to solve this OT problem was also proposed, which was an alternating iteration method constrained by margins of line-packs and consumers. Validations were designed and conducted with simulations on a practical segment of the pipeline, which demonstrated the precision and effectiveness of the proposed model in different scenarios. Further parameter studies analyzed the principle how the proposed model optimized the energy consumption, and a 14.5% of energy saving was realized with the proposed model under the given working conditions.