Improved arrangement method of gas compressor station for long-distance gas pipelines

In traditional gas compressor station arrangement of long-distance gas pipelines, annual throughput is taken as the design rate, but attention is rarely paid to low efficiency and wasted design margin of gas compressor stations which are resulted from elevation and temperature change of the stations. In this paper, therefore, a set of station arrangement method is put forward on the basis of equal load factor theory. This method is used for long-distance trunk of the west section of 2nd West-to-East Gas Pipeline to tell the difference between traditional method and the improved method in terms of transmission capacity, inlet and outlet pressure and temperature, gas consumption, load factor, compressor configuration, driving mode and station spacing. It is indicated that full average load factor (98.3%) of the improved method is much higher than that of the traditional one. At the downstream market, the outlet pressure difference is only 2.86 MPa, and pressure ratio is 1.35. The number of stations drops to 12 from 14 and the number of driving units reduces by 9, so the direct economic investment is saved by RMB 12×10⁸. With the improved method, natural gas pipe network can operate safely, failure influences induced by too many stations are reduced, resource is utilized rationally and gas demand of downstream market is satisfied.