From robotic factories, home automation, and even self-driving cars, software solutions are streamlining what were once time consuming and error-prone human operations. Automated tasks elevate the level of precision, efficiencies, and safety in activities such as running a cross-country pipeline. Even with SCADA or DCS, visualizing the true complexity of the system is difficult for the human controller. The skill level needed to run a pipeline takes months, if not years, to master, and yet mistakes can happen and issues may be overlooked, causing both immediate and long-term integrity concerns. Using real-time modeling, advanced scheduling tools, and sophisticated optimization techniques, an automated, software-driven pipeline management system is capable of fully running a pipeline’s operation with appropriate human supervision to maintain operations within an envelope, track batches, pigs, and tools, and improve operational reliability.
Local automation and optimization methods are insufficient due to time lags between cause and effect. Abstracting the problem buys speed but often at the cost of lower quality and even reduced viability of the selected strategies. To allow for true automation and the necessary safety assurances, the status of the assets on the ground must be captured.
Advanced software contextualizes data from the assets to drive greater efficiency and safety. Real-time models support the framework; schedules are produced for the upcoming operations, which drive an optimizer using carefully selected setpoints. Once a plan is in place, the strategy drives a transient simulator to ensure correct hydraulic performance of the pipeline. Redundant safety systems are in place to verify that the plan is progressing as intended.
Taking a global approach to software and automation and incorporating modern computational optimization, learning, and intelligent solutions offers the controller an expanded capacity to monitor the precision, safety, and efficiency of the pipeline operations. The software rapidly responds to transient changes in the pipeline, resulting in tighter and more effective real-time operations. Finally, the software provides a wealth of key operational and business information.
In this paper we present some of the emerging solutions in this space and discuss potential benefits and pitfalls.
