New Method to Minimize Fuel Consumption of Gas Pipeline Using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithms

International audience In this paper, ant colony optimization algorithm (ACOA) is proposed to solve the problem of how to efficiently operate a natural gas pipeline under steady state assumptions. The system is composed by compressing stations linked by pipe-legs. For each station, it is necessary to find the operating turbocompressors optimal values and the discharge pressures ones to minimize the total amount of fuel gas consumed in the system by the compressor stations. In the past, several techniques ranging from classical gradient-based procedures to dynamic programming, for solving this no convex problem have been applied. In this paper, we propose the ant colony optimization metaheuristic. This method was applied to the gas pipeline Hassi R' mell- ARZEW (two cities in Algeria) and the results are compared with those obtained by employing dynamic programming method. From these results, we obtain that the ACO technique is an interesting way for the gas pipeline operations optimization.