A research study (12 credits) submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Environment, Resources and Development

Research Studies Project Report (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1986

Natural gas is the only indigenous source of commercial energy which is available in any significant quantity in Bangladesh. The natural gas industry in Bangladesh was studied and the design process in natural gas was reviewed. Natural gas network expansions are highly capital intensive and significant cost savings may be effected by proper design and optimization. The Regional Computer Center of AIT has recently installed a CADAM station with IBM 5080 work stations. The CAD system offers interactive graphics and may be interfaced with the CPU of the Mainframe 3031. The application of the CAD system for natural gas transmission network design was studied. The network data was successfully entered interactively into the scope as a network diagram and a network analysis program was written for a solution of a sample tree network without loops. The interfacing, however, could not be successfully completed. Due to the time constraints, the study could not be carried out further. The study suggested that the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD ) for natural gas network design offers advantage over conventional network design techniques. However, the interface with central processor has to be further developed to allow effective interchange of the network data between the network diagram and the processor to carry out the design calculations and also to transfer the results back to the drawing as graphical output. The execution of the analysis program was tried in the batch mode. However, recent releases of the CADAM software allows interactive menu driven execution of any analysis program through the function key MACGM. This area should prove to be a more powerful design tool and may be further studied.