Technical Assessment of Isothermal and Non-Isothermal Modelings of Natural Gas Pipeline Operational Conditions

Technical Assessment of Isothermal and Non-Isothermal Modelings of Natural Gas Pipeline Operational Conditions - Modeling of equipment in a gas pipeline was performed here by deriving a new form of conservation equation set for compressible flow. Then a section of the third Iranian gas transmission pipeline (Nourabad-Pataveh-Dorahan, N-P-D) was investigated by isothermal (IT) and non-isothermal (NIT) modeling approaches taking into account the effects of ground temperature. In the first part, the steady state operation of the N-P-D pipeline including a compressor station at Pataveh was studied. For the known values of natural gas mass flow rate, and inlet/outlet gas pressures at Nourabad/Dorahan points, the IT and NIT modelings showed about 33.7%, 16.6% and 23% maximum difference percent points for the compressors head, compressors rotational speed and fuel consumption rates respectively. In the second part, the unsteady operation of the N-P-D pipeline due to the shutdown of a compressor at Pataveh Compressor Station (PCS) was studied. The results confirmed that at lower ground temperatures (0 and 20 degrees C), the remaining compressors could compensate the loss of one compressor. However, at higher ground temperatures (40 and 50 degrees C), the compressors had to run faster than the highest permissible speed to be able to deliver a certain mass flow rate without reducing the required pipeline pressure. In all above studied cases, the computing time for the non-isothermal modeling was about three times longer than that for the isothermal one.