MATHEON-B20: Optimization of Gas Transport (Berlin)

Natural gas is one of the most important energy sources in Germany and Europe. In recent years, political regulations have led to a strict separation of gas trading and gas transport, thereby assigning a central role in energy politics to the transportation and distribution of gas. These newly imposed political requirements influenced the technical processes of gas transport in such a way that the complex task of planning and operating gas networks has still intensified.

Description

Mathematically, the combination of discrete decisions on the configuration of a gas transport network (a), the nonlinear equations describing the physics of gas (b), the newly imposed deregulation rules (c), and the uncertainty in demand and supply (d) yield large-scale and highly complex stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear constraint programs. For solving this type of problems, no suitable algorithms or software are available by now. With respect to each individual aspects of stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear constraint programming, i.e., mixed-integer linear programming, global optimization of nonlinear programs, constraint satisfaction, and stochastic programming, remarkable progress has been made, however, over the last decades. The goal of this project is to incorporate these powerful technologies into a general framework which can solve the mixed-integer nonlinear constraint programs with stochastic components arising in gas transport and other applications.

The vision of this project is to advance the rapid specification and efficient solution of mixed-integer nonlinear programs with chance constraints which will have a broad impact on industrial and academic projects inside and outside of Matheon.

For further information please visit: MATHEON-B20