Optimal emergency shutdown valve configuration for pressurised pipelines

Abstract

This paper presents the development and testing of a multi-objective optimisation technique for selecting the optimal in-line Emergency Shutdown Valve (ESDV) configurations for high-pressure transport pipelines. Using a real 150.2 km long, 1016 mm i.d. natural gas pipeline operating at 80 bar and 307.24 K as a case study, the optimisation technique is employed to strike the optimal balance between risk reduction, valve failure rate and capital cost expenditure. Starting with defining a set of six important valve and pipeline design characteristics as optimisation variables, Principal Component Analysis is employed to reduce the number of these parameters to three, reducing computational workload, whilst retaining accuracy. The results obtained using the multi-objective optimisation model are presented using scatter plots providing a geometrical visualisation of the set of optimal solutions in the space of objective functions. The findings demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed technique as an effective tool for the decision makers to select the optimal inline ESDV configurations, taking account of the valve type, pipeline overall dimensions, operating conditions, and the fluid composition being transported.