Abstract
Small leaks in natural gas pipelines are hard to detect, and there are few studies on this problem in the literature. In this paper, a method based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) is proposed to detect and locate small leaks in natural gas pipelines. First, the method of a characteristic line is used to establish a discrete model of transient pipeline flow. At the same time, according to the basic idea of EKF, a leakage rate is distributed to each segment of the discrete model to obtain a model with virtual multi-point leakage. As such, the virtual leakage rate becomes a component of the state variables in the model. Secondly, system noise and measurement noise are considered, and the optimal hydraulic factors such as leakage rate are estimated using EKF. Finally, by using the idea of an equivalent pipeline, the actual leakage rate is calculated and the location of leakage on the pipeline is assessed. Simulation and experimental results show that this method can consistently predict the leakage rate and location and is sensitive to small leakages in a natural gas pipeline.
Highlights
Natural gas is a kind of high-quality, efficient, clean energy and raw material
It can be seen that the estimated leakage rate curve is basically consistent with the designed leakage rate curve, indicating that the proposed method based on extended Kalman filter (EKF) can detect the leakage and estimate the leakage rate accurately
RateEKF: curve is basically with the leak rate using simulation extended designed leakage rate curve, indicating that the proposed method based on EKF can detect the leakage rate accurately
Summary
Natural gas is a kind of high-quality, efficient, clean energy and raw material. Since the 1970s, the development of natural gas in the world has been accelerated, and the research on gas exploitation, transportation, and storage has received increasing attention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The real-time model considers the influence of system noise and measurement noise and has advantages in small leakage detection It has some disadvantages, such as complex computation and slow convergence. This paper proposes an EKF-based method for small leakage detection and location in natural gas pipelines. Complementary to the previous efforts, the authors of this paper approach this topic as subject matter experts in pipe leakage detection We understand that both the NPW method and the fiber-optic-based method are widely used and able to obtain reasonably good leakage detection results. These two methods do not need to establish a pipeline model They mainly process signals and identify patterns for real-time leakage detection. The Kalman filter has the advantages of fast convergence and high precision in terms of state estimation This compensates for the original shortcomings in the real-time model method such as slow convergence.
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