Optimal Design of an Energy-efficient Natural Gas Transmission Mainline

This research was aimed at determining an optimal sequence of connection of nodes for an energy-efficient natural gas mainline system that transports natural gas. The nonlinear algebraic equation from the model of a generic pipeline network was solved using Hardy Cross method. The generic network was converted to an analogous electrical network by replacing the branches of the network with resistive impedances and other parts with corresponding electrical quantities and then solved. This was done to check the closeness of the approximate solution from the electrical network to the actual solution of the network from Hardy Cross method and if the simpler and approximate method could be deployed to solve more complex natural gas networks. From the analysis done, the linear correlation between the two solutions gave 0.9948. Based on this finding, the optimal path of a complex natural gas transmission system was determined using the Dijkstra's algorithm and the solution gotten from the electrical analysis of the pipeline network.