Modelling and Simulation for PIG Flow Control in Natural Gas Pipeline

This paper deals with dynamic behaviour analysis for pipeline inspection gauge (PIG) flow control in natural gas pipeline. The dynamic behaviour of the PIG is depending on the different Pressure between the rear and nose parts, which is generated by injected gas flow behind PIG's tail and expelled gas flow in front of its nose. To analyze the dynamic behaviour characteristics such as gas flow in pipeline, and the PIG's position and velocity, mathematical model is derived as two types of a nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equation for unsteady flow analysis of the PIG driving and expelled gas, and nonhomogeneous differential equation for dynamic analysis of PIG. The nonlinear equation is solved by method of characteristics (MOC) with the regular rectangular grid under appropriate initial and boundary conditions. The Runge-Kuta method is used when we solve the steady flow equations to get initial flow values and the dynamic equation of PIG. The gas upstream and downstream of PIG are divided into a number of elements of equal length. The sampling time and distance are chosen under Courant-Friedrich-Lewy (CFL) restriction. The simulation is performed with a pipeline segment in the Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) low pressure system, Ueijungboo-Sangye line. The simulation results show us that the derived mathematical model and the proposed computational scheme are effective for estimating the position and velocity of PIG with different operational conditions of pipeline.