Natural Gas Processing from Midstream to Downstream

8 Optimization of Natural Gas Network Operation under Uncertainty

Emmanuel Ogbe^1,2, Ali Elkamel^1,2, Michael Fowler¹ and Ali Almansoori²

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

²Khalifa University, The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Chapter Menu

1. 8.1 Introduction
2. 8.2 Literature Review
3. 8.3 Natural Gas Supply Chains
4. 8.4 Optimization Model
5. 8.5 Computation Study
6. 8.6 Results and Discussion
7. 8.7 Conclusions and Recommendations

With global energy demands on the ascendency, natural gas is being considered as the twenty‐first century fuel essential in bridging the gap between traditional fossil‐fuel‐based energy economy and a completely decarbonized energy economy. This is due to its smaller carbon footprint in terms of CO₂ emission equivalent inventories during production, lower SO_x, NO_x, and particulate emissions, and lower pollution metrics. The optimization of natural gas networks, starting from pipelines connecting sources of natural gas at the natural gas wells, through to preprocessing and processing, to storage and distribution of processed natural gas, at sometimes very remote demand location, is of paramount importance.

In this chapter, we aim at reviewing the modeling and optimization efforts in natural gas network systems, with attention to blending natural gas from various sources under steady‐state conditions. The mixing of natural gas from diverse sources, with different quality ...