Roger Z. Ríos-Mercado
Department of Industrial Engineering
Texas A&M University
E. Andrew Boyd
PROS Strategic Solutions, Inc.
Abstract: In this paper we consider the problem of minimizing fuel cost on steady-state gas transmission problems on looped networks. We present a mathematical formulation, and propose a heuristic based on a two-stage iterative procedure. At a first stage, gas flow variables are fixed and optimal pressure variables are found via dynamic programming. At the second stage, the pressure variables are fixed and an attempt is made to find a set of flow variables that improve the objective function by exploiting the underlying network structure.