Analysis of options for increasing pipeline capacity

Natural gas is the preferred fuel for most applications ranging from home heating to electric power production with high efficiency combined cycle power plants. It is competitively priced, relatively easy to transport and results in substantially lower undesirable emissions relative to coal and liquid petroleum. A limiting problem has been availability of pipelines and capacity limits on existing pipelines as was indicated in California in the year 2000. Additional pipelines meet substantial resistance in the approval process. Another option may be to increase the capacity of existing pipelines via higher pressures and additional compressors. This work presents some history, existing practice and projected requirements for the natural gas delivery system. It discusses the analogy between the capacity increase and transmission loss decrease with higher voltages in electric power systems and with higher pressures in gas pipelines. It then performs a fluid dynamic analysis of a reference pipeline to evaluate performance at various capacities. It also evaluates the option of increasing capacity and decreasing compressor power requirements by increasing the pipeline operating pressures.