Predictive Control of Gas Injection in Natural Gas Transport Networks

The present sought to draw a comparison between Model Predictive Control performance and two other controllers named Simple PI and Selective PI in controlling large-scale natural gas transport networks. A nonlinear dynamic model of representative gas pipeline was derived from pipeline governing rules and simulated in SIMULINK® environment of MATLAB®. Control schemes were designed to provide a suitable pressure at consumers’ nodes by varying the refinery production rate and compressor station output pressure in the middle of pipeline. The results showed that the model predictive control significantly outperformed the other two methods in economic controlling of pipeline by using less energy in compressor station and simultaneously rejecting disturbances. Although MPC controller performed better, it had a more complicated structure and difficult design procedure than PI controllers.