Assessment of Black Powder Concentrations in Natural Gas Pipeline Networks

Natural gas transmission pipeline networks are facing serious issues related to the solid particles deposition that is called black powder (BP). The creation of BP inside natural gas pipeline is not completely understood, but it mainly results from the pipelines inner walls corrosion, which is a complex chemical reaction between the natural gas and pipelines. Moreover, the exact BP generation time, amount, and location are still vague. This work aims to reduce the effect of BP by estimating BP concentrations in natural gas networks. This will significantly help natural gas pipeline networks operators to plan more effective maintenance schedules. This work takes into account the industrial need for simple, fast, and accurate techniques for estimating BP concentration in natural gas pipeline networks. The proposed BP estimation technique is based on a lookup table (LT) which is constructed from a one-dimensional model of BP deposition and transport. This technique eliminates the need for extensive computational efforts and long estimation times that are necessary for other optimization-based BP estimation techniques. The proposed LT-based BP estimation technique is validated and compared to other BP estimation techniques using simulation studies. The results of the proposed BP estimation technique show that it is promising and has potentials for application in existing and future natural gas networks.