Risk-oriented approach to the issue of industrial safety and energy resource efficiency gas transport enterprises

Any gas-main pipeline presents a technological complex of objects that functions as a single system, where all objects of the gas-main pipeline are classified as hazardous facilities, for which most of the existing risks are typical. In order to maintain a gas-transport system in operational, standard and safe condition, it is necessary to perform repair (routine) work assuming replacement or repair of defective sections of the pipe (or other equipment). The methods which an operator of a gas-transport system uses today for ensuring safety of such repair (routine) work are either environmentally harmful (“bleed” of gas), or hazardous and inefficient by energy and/or resource (“bleed” of gas, gas utilization, increasing of pipeline bearing capacity, "overlaying-welding" of defects under pressure, etc.). With this scheme of technological process, level of working and environmental safety and energy-resource efficiency of gas-transport enterprises sharply decreases. The purpose of our research was to propose a risk-oriented approach to the problem of working safety and energy resource efficiency of the gas-transport enterprises. The only type of repair, with which operational (safe) state and resource of the pipeline system can be fully restored is replacement of defective pipe or its section. Therefore, at the stage of preparatory work, the most acute problem is discharge of natural gas from the local section of pipelines by means of its pumping-over (accumulation) instead of "bleeding" or "utilization". We propose a rational, effective and risk-oriented approach to the use of mobile compressor units for pumping over (evacuating) of natural gas as a method for improving working safety and energy efficiency of the gas-transport enterprises. The proposed approach allows the gas-transport companies to create quickly an automated risk management system and reduce the risk level and, as a result, to improve working safety and energy efficiency of the processes of gas transportation.