Valve Control to Avoid Column Separation in a Pipe

by Faiq Pasha, Univ of Arizona, United States,
Dinshaw Contractor, Univ of Arizona, United States,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Pipeline Design and Installation

Abstract:

Maximum pressures in a pipeline can be reduced significantly by closing the valve in an optimal manner. Such an optimal valve closure policy may result in some situations in minimum pressures below the vapor pressure of the fluid. Thus, column separation will occur with consequent high pressures that were not taken into account in the derivation of the optimal valve closure policy. Hence, it is desirable to minimize the maximum pressure (H_max) in a pipeline, subject to the constraint that the minimum pressure (H_min) in the pipeline be greater than or equal to a pre-selected pressure, e.g., the vapor pressure of the fluid (H). The method of characteristics is used to simulate fluid transients in a pipe and the simplex method is used to optimize the objective function. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the valve-closure policies obtained when different objective functions are used.

Subject Headings: Valves | Pressure pipes | Control systems | Optimization models | Numerical methods | Water policy | Water pipelines

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