University of Bergen

Improving the Operation of Pipeline Systems on Cyclic Structures by Tabu Search
Conrado Borraz-Sanchez and Roger Z. Rios-Mercado
Graduate Program in Systems Engineering, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon

 

CONRADO, Ph. D. Student:

Office: Høyteknologisenteret, Thormøhlensgt. 55, 4th floor, room 4130
Phone (direct): +47 55 58 41 50
The fastest way to reach me is to write me an e-mail: Conrado.Borraz-Sanchez@ii.uib.no
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Technical Report PISIS-2005-04, Graduate Program in Systems Engineering, UANL, San Nicolás de los Garza, México, November 2005.

Abstract:

In the paper the problem of how to efficiently operate a natural gas transmission network under steady-state asumptions is considered. The problem is modeled as a nonlinear network optimization problem where the decision variables are mass flow rate in each arc and gas pressure in each node. The objective function to be minimized is the total amount of fuel consumed in the system by the compressor stations. In the past, several techniques ranging from classical gradient-based procedures to dynamic programming, for solving this difficult nonconvex problem have been applied with limited success, particularly when applied to cyclic network topologies. A cyclic system is defined as a network containg at least one cycle involving two or more compressor stations. In this paper we proposed a hybrid metaheuristic procedure that effciently exploits the problem structure. This hybrid procedure combines very effectively a nonsequential dynamic programming algorithm for finding an optimal set of pressure variables for a fixed set of mass flow rate varables, and short-term memory tabu search procedure for guiding the search in the flow variable space. Empirical evidence over a wide variety of instances supports the effectiviness of the proposed procedure outperforming the best existing approach to the best of our knowledge.

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Last modified November 9, 2007