A Procedure for Finding Initial Feasible Solutions on Cyclic Natural Gas Networks

Abstract: The fuel cost minimization problem on cyclic natural gas networks system is addressed. We provide and describe an efficient algorithm for achieving a feasible point inside a non-convex nonlinear compressor station domain. We work with several different types of topologies, many of those being cyclic structures. By tightening variable bounds at preprocessing, we propose a simple procedure for getting feasible solutions quickly. This procedure avoids the many numerical difficulties inherent to this very complex while treated with classical nonlinear programming techniques. A computational study revealed the effectiveness of the proposed procedure as it was able to deliver feasible solutions quickly to many instances with cyclic structures, and thus, outperforming previous approaches.