Preliminary Monitoring of Ground Slumping Across a Natural Gas Distribution Network With Satellite Radar

Author(s):  
Michael D. Henschel ◽  
Benjamin Deschamps ◽  
Gillian Robert ◽  
Dan Zulkoski

Ground deformation from natural or anthropogenic processes is a significant factor in the integrity management plan for natural gas distribution networks. Rapid or large scale deformation can pose an immediate rupture threat. Smaller, more gradual or repeated ground deformations may lead to material stresses, damage and strain accumulation, posing a longer-term threat. Satellite monitoring can play a key role in pipeline integrity management programs by measuring ground deformation over an entire pipeline network, at high spatial and temporal resolutions with the ability to capture both rapid large scale and subtle, repeated ground movement over a longer period of time. Millimeter accuracy ground deformation estimates are derived from radar satellite imagery using InSAR, a well-established and validated remote sensing technique. InSAR is an effective tool for rapidly identifying new regions requiring ground geotechnical surveys, deriving estimates of deformation rate, extents, and evolution of deformation patterns, for validating or extending traditional ground-based measurements, and for forward-looking operational monitoring. We present the results of InSAR ground deformation monitoring over a natural gas distribution pipeline network in Saskatchewan, Canada. At the case study site, small diameter pipelines (up to 40 years old) have been subjected to ground slumping from a retrogressive landslide affecting multiple lakeshore communities and compounded in recent years by a high water table. Some locations have recently experienced slumping at rates greater than 50 cm/yr leading to important structural issues with roads, buildings, water mains, and gas pipelines. The ground movement analysis is based on RADARSAT-2 satellite imagery acquired at 24-day intervals over a short period in 2015. Thousands of suitable measurement points were identified over two communities on opposite shores of the lake. The measured InSAR deformation time series showed deformation toward the lake. The extents of the deformation are clearly delineated by the InSAR measurements.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 3044
Author(s):  
Mingjie Liao ◽  
Rui Zhang ◽  
Jichao Lv ◽  
Bin Yu ◽  
Jiatai Pang ◽  
...  

In recent years, many cities in the Chinese loess plateau (especially in Shanxi province) have encountered ground subsidence problems due to the construction of underground projects and the exploitation of underground resources. With the completion of the world’s largest geotechnical project, called “mountain excavation and city construction,” in a collapsible loess area, the Yan’an city also appeared to have uneven ground subsidence. To obtain the spatial distribution characteristics and the time-series evolution trend of the subsidence, we selected Yan’an New District (YAND) as the specific study area and presented an improved time-series InSAR (TS-InSAR) method for experimental research. Based on 89 Sentinel-1A images collected between December 2017 to December 2020, we conducted comprehensive research and analysis on the spatial and temporal evolution of surface subsidence in YAND. The monitoring results showed that the YAND is relatively stable in general, with deformation rates mainly in the range of −10 to 10 mm/yr. However, three significant subsidence funnels existed in the fill area, with a maximum subsidence rate of 100 mm/yr. From 2017 to 2020, the subsidence funnels enlarged, and their subsidence rates accelerated. Further analysis proved that the main factors induced the severe ground subsidence in the study area, including the compressibility and collapsibility of loess, rapid urban construction, geological environment change, traffic circulation load, and dynamic change of groundwater. The experimental results indicated that the improved TS-InSAR method is adaptive to monitoring uneven subsidence of deep loess area. Moreover, related data and information would provide reference to the large-scale ground deformation monitoring and in similar loess areas.


Author(s):  
Yue Xiang ◽  
Peng Wang ◽  
Bo Yu ◽  
Dongliang Sun

The numerical simulation efficiency of large-scale natural gas pipeline network is usually unsatisfactory. In this paper, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-accelerated hydraulic simulations for large-scale natural gas pipeline networks are presented. First, based on the Decoupled Implicit Method for Efficient Network Simulation (DIMENS) method, presented in our previous study, a novel two-level parallel simulation process and the corresponding parallel numerical method for hydraulic simulations of natural gas pipeline networks are proposed. Then, the implementation of the two-level parallel simulation in GPU is introduced in detail. Finally, some numerical experiments are provided to test the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method has notable speedup. For five large-scale pipe networks, compared with the well-known commercial simulation software SPS, the speedup ratio of the proposed method is up to 57.57 with comparable calculation accuracy. It is more inspiring that the proposed method has strong adaptability to the large pipeline networks, the larger the pipeline network is, the larger speedup ratio of the proposed method is. The speedup ratio of the GPU method approximately linearly depends on the total discrete points of the network.


Author(s):  
A. Y. Hou ◽  
X. Qiao ◽  
D. Li

As a new generation of high resolution and short revisit period of radar satellite, TerraSAR-X is not only able to meet the requirements of monitoring large scale surface subsidence, but also make it possible to monitor the small deformation of the short period. This articles takes the coastal areas of the west coast of Qingdao as the research object. With Small baselines subsets interferometry synthetic aperture radar (SBASI), this paper obtained the period the average annual rate of change from the time series analysis of TerraSAR-X data from April 2015 to October 2014.In order to enrich the historical deformation data of the study area, it analyse the time series of ALOS images from December 2010 to October 2008 with the same method. Finally,it analyse and demonstrate the experimental results.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Brikić

Accent is on determination of appropriate friction factor, and on selection of representative equation for natural gas flow under presented conditions in the network. Calculation of presented looped gas-pipeline network is done according to principles of Hardy Cross method. The final flows were calculated, for known pipes diameters and nodes consumptions while the flow velocities through pipes have to stand below certain values. In optimization problem flows are treated as constant, while the diameters are variables.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 3683-3710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Henne ◽  
Dominik Brunner ◽  
Brian Oney ◽  
Markus Leuenberger ◽  
Werner Eugster ◽  
...  

Abstract. Atmospheric inverse modelling has the potential to provide observation-based estimates of greenhouse gas emissions at the country scale, thereby allowing for an independent validation of national emission inventories. Here, we present a regional-scale inverse modelling study to quantify the emissions of methane (CH4) from Switzerland, making use of the newly established CarboCount-CH measurement network and a high-resolution Lagrangian transport model. In our reference inversion, prior emissions were taken from the "bottom-up" Swiss Greenhouse Gas Inventory (SGHGI) as published by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment in 2014 for the year 2012. Overall we estimate national CH4 emissions to be 196 ± 18 Gg yr−1 for the year 2013 (1σ uncertainty). This result is in close agreement with the recently revised SGHGI estimate of 206 ± 33 Gg yr−1 as reported in 2015 for the year 2012. Results from sensitivity inversions using alternative prior emissions, uncertainty covariance settings, large-scale background mole fractions, two different inverse algorithms (Bayesian and extended Kalman filter), and two different transport models confirm the robustness and independent character of our estimate. According to the latest SGHGI estimate the main CH4 source categories in Switzerland are agriculture (78 %), waste handling (15 %) and natural gas distribution and combustion (6 %). The spatial distribution and seasonal variability of our posterior emissions suggest an overestimation of agricultural CH4 emissions by 10 to 20 % in the most recent SGHGI, which is likely due to an overestimation of emissions from manure handling. Urban areas do not appear as emission hotspots in our posterior results, suggesting that leakages from natural gas distribution are only a minor source of CH4 in Switzerland. This is consistent with rather low emissions of 8.4 Gg yr−1 reported by the SGHGI but inconsistent with the much higher value of 32 Gg yr−1 implied by the EDGARv4.2 inventory for this sector. Increased CH4 emissions (up to 30 % compared to the prior) were deduced for the north-eastern parts of Switzerland. This feature was common to most sensitivity inversions, which is a strong indicator that it is a real feature and not an artefact of the transport model and the inversion system. However, it was not possible to assign an unambiguous source process to the region. The observations of the CarboCount-CH network provided invaluable and independent information for the validation of the national bottom-up inventory. Similar systems need to be sustained to provide independent monitoring of future climate agreements.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 3934
Author(s):  
Emil Bayramov ◽  
Manfred Buchroithner ◽  
Martin Kada

This research focused on the quantitative assessment of the surface deformation velocities and rates and their natural and man-made controlling factors as the potential risks along the seismically active 70 km section of buried oil and gas pipeline in Azerbaijan using Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PS-InSAR) and Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) remote sensing analysis. Both techniques showed that the continuous subsidence was prevailing in the kilometer range of 13–70 of pipelines crossing two seismic faults. The ground uplift deformations were observed in the pipeline kilometer range of 0–13. Although both PS-InSAR and SBAS measurements were highly consistent in deformation patterns and trends along pipelines, they showed differences in the spatial distribution of ground deformation classes and noisiness of produced results. High dispersion of PS-InSAR measurements caused low regression coefficients with SBAS for the entire pipeline kilometer range of 0–70. SBAS showed better performance than PS-InSAR along buried petroleum and gas pipelines in the following aspects: the complete coverage of the measured points, significantly lower dispersion of the results, continuous and realistic measurements and higher accuracy of ground deformation rates against the GPS historical measurements. As a primary factor of ground deformations, the influence of tectonic movements was observed in the wide scale analysis along 70 km long and 10 km wide section of petroleum and gas pipelines; however, the largest subsidence rates were observed in the areas of agricultural activities which accelerate the deformation rates caused by the tectonic processes. The diverse spatial distribution and variation of ground movement processes along pipelines demonstrated that general geological and geotechnical understanding of the study area is not sufficient to find and mitigate all the critical sites of subsidence and uplifts for the pipeline operators. This means that both techniques outlined in this paper provide a significant improvement for ground deformation monitoring or can significantly contribute to the assessment of geohazards and preventative countermeasures along petroleum and gas pipelines.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 4453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Danieli ◽  
Gianluca Carraro ◽  
Andrea Lazzaretto

A big amount of the pressure energy content in the natural gas distribution networks is wasted in throttling valves of pressure reduction stations (PRSs). Just a few energy recovery systems are currently installed in PRSs and are mostly composed of radial turboexpanders coupled with cogeneration internal combustion engines or gas-fired heaters providing the necessary preheating. This paper clarifies the reason for the scarce diffusion of energy recovery systems in PRSs and provides guidelines about the most feasible energy recovery technologies. Nine thousand PRSs are monitored and allocated into 12 classes, featuring different expansion ratios and available power. The focus is on PRSs with 1-to-20 expansion ratio and 1-to-500 kW available power. Three kinds of expanders are proposed in combination with different preheating systems based on boilers, heat pumps, or cogeneration engines. The goal is to identify, for each class, the most feasible combination by looking at the minimum payback period and maximum net present value. Results show that small size volumetric expanders with low expansion ratios and coupled with gas-fired heaters have the highest potential for large-scale deployment of energy recovery from PRSs. Moreover, the total recoverable energy using the feasible recovery systems is approximately 15% of the available energy.


Author(s):  
Abdelfettah Fredj ◽  
Aaron Dinovitzer ◽  
Joe Zhou

Soil-pipe interactions when large ground movements occur are an important consideration in pipeline design, route selection, guide monitoring and reduce the risk of damage or failure. Large ground movement can be caused by slope failures, faulting, landslides and seismic activities. Such conditions induce large deformations of both the soil and pipe. Analyses of such behavior pose a significant challenge to capabilities of standard finite elements as the capability to analyze large deformations is required. This requirement is difficult to meet for Lagrangian-based code. New developments using ALE methods make it possible to determine soil and pipe deformation confidently for large displacements. This paper describes a study performed to investigate the mechanical behavior of a pipeline subjected to large soil movement. A 3D continuum modeling using an ALE (Arbitrary Eulerian Lagrangian) formulation was developed and run using LS-DYNA. The results are compared with published experimental data of large-scale test to verify the numerical analysis method. The analysis is further extended to analyze the soil-pipe interaction under permanent ground deformation such as those associated with surface fault rupture and landslides.


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