GAIL (India)

Abstract Gas Pipeline is the backbone of the energy infrastructure of any country and is going to gain far more importance in India with the increasing thrust of government towards energy security and self-reliance. Humongous investments are being done in execution of various pipeline projects so that even far flung geographical areas are also served with clean fuel. With the increasing geographical area under coverage following changes are being faced by pipeline industry: (i) Safety related issues like Third party intrusions & pipeline leaks: Pipeline industry deploys various pipeline leak detection system using Mass Balancing or Pressure Wave or other principles. However, the accuracy of the leak detection often depends upon the accuracy of the associated instrumentation system like flow, pressure, temperature and gas quality parameters measurement. In case of any difficulty in reducing the false leak alarms, it is found challenging to establish the authenticity of data available from the primary instrumentation inputs. (ii) Commercial issues like gas measurement, reconciliation and LAUF gas accounting For big pipeline Network operators, Gas reconciliation and LAUF gas accounting is also a challenge. In case of any discrepancy in any of the gas meters at a given point of time may cost a company huge financial loss if not detected and corrected immediately. Recognizing the imminent need for development of online validation, audit and diagnostic systems which track, monitor and predict the health of the instruments on their own without intervention of the operators and keep the operator updated in case of any deviations from normal course of operation was felt and a unified platform using industry 4.0 tools - Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Edge Analytics, advanced data analytics with digital twin models for pipeline integrity and custody transfer based on the basic principles of science and equipment operational philosophy/algorithms such as USM, GC and Flow Computers has been exploited to gain insight about the equipment operational behavior and prediction of condition/health of equipment.

Integrating Constant Power Loads (CPL) in a DC microgrid generates a virtual negative impedance that may lead to system instability. CPL deteriorates the system damping, which is more severe for the DC power system with large line impedances. This paper proposes a novel and simple virtual negative resistance-based control loop for the DC-DC converters connected at both source and load ends to enhance the CPL stability margin in a DC microgrid. The proposed control scheme includes a simple pole-zero criterion to evaluate the virtual negative resistance. Further, small-signal and extended large-signal models of the bidirectional DC-DC converters are developed to calculate stabilizer parameters and assess system stability with CPL. These models effectively calculate optimal stabilizer parameter values using simple root locus analysis. A comparative stability analysis is conducted to illustrate the system’s resilience in the face of changes in parameter values and considerable enhancement of the stability margin. The eigenvalue analysis and time domain simulations are performed with the proposed control strategy at the source and load side converters without affecting the load side voltage profile to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Abstract One 30″ Diameter and around 68 km length Natural Gas pipeline caters for energy supply for Pune city; supplying Gas Sectors for Auto Sectors (CNG) and few industrial Sectors. Though line is equipped with Launcher & Receiver; but onward became challenging one for pigging for many constraints: - Low Flow Constraint - Varying Hydraulic through out the Day - Presence of interim Hilly Terrain (600 meter High) The pipe line is passing through with intermittent stretches between city areas with High Consequence areas in surrounding of the pipeline along with intermittent stretches on the hilly terrain as well. With above mentioned several aspects of the pipeline, In-Line-Inspection (ILI) is obvious first preference for online precise integrity assessment for any pipeline (i.e. without any interruption in gas transmission through the pipeline) Site Specific Assessment, Detail Engineering & Committed approach resulted in Feasibility & Development of ILI Tool, & onward Integrity Assessment of the pipeline conducted by accomplishing Successful ILI run.

Fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer the best aerodynamic efficiency required for long-distance or high-endurance applications, albeit their runway requirement for take-off and landing in comparison with quadcopters, helicopters, and flapping-wing UAVs that can perform vertical take-off and landing (VTOL). Integrating a multirotor system with a fixed-wing UAV imparts VTOL capabilities without significantly compromising fixed-wing aerodynamic efficiency, endurance, payload capacity or range. Documented system design approaches to address various challenges of such fusion processes are sparse. This research proposes a holistic approach for designing, prototyping, and testing an electric-powered fixed-wing hybrid VTOL UAV. The proposed system design approach augments the standard aircraft design process with additional steps to integrate VTOL capabilities. Separate fixed-wing and multirotor designs were derived from the frozen mission requirements, which were then fused. The process used simulation for modeling and evaluating alternatives for the hybrid UAV created using standard aircraft design equations. We prototyped and instrumented the final design to validate operational capabilities through test flights. Multiple flight trials identified the ideal combination of Lithium-Polymer (Li-Po) batteries for VTOL (8000mAh) and fixed-wing (14000mAh) modes to meet the endurance and range requirements. The redundant power supplies also increased the survivability chances of the hybrid UAV during failures.

This chapter provides an overview of operations-intensive organizations. The deep insights and applications of the asset maintenance contributing factors during asset maintenance phases such as the initial phase, implementation phase, and assessment phase are explained based on the research study conducted among asset maintenance managers/engineers working in operations-intensive organizations. This approach adds value to asset maintenance concepts by capturing tacit knowledge available to the industry.During the initial phase of asset maintenance, the key elements to be considered in planning and scheduling maintenance work are equipment history, work order with priority, preventive maintenance schedules, weekly work schedules, long-term/shutdown maintenance schedule, and work measurement backlog. A suitable Computerized Maintenance Management Software that integrates all these elements to maintain the maintenance scheduling and monitor work schedules is essential in asset maintenance. The importance of maintenance policy, allocation of budget resources, the role of materials management, and workforce resources are discussed in this chapter.During the asset maintenance implementation phase, the various elements of maintenance tactics such as preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, total maintenance hours, compliance of maintenance schedules, Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) recommendations, Reliability-Centered Maintenance, Total Productive Maintenance, proactive maintenance, and shutdown maintenance are also deliberated in detail in this chapter. Further, the first area of change toward employee motivation should be employee empowerment. Maintenance managers should provide directions and point out the desired results; empowering maintenance supervisors to achieve the desired results within their capacity is elaborated in the employee empowerment topic.The key elements in evaluating maintenance performance such as maintenance cost, equipment history, training man-hours of maintenance staff, internal/industry norms, benchmarking measures and targets, and their role in formulating and selecting maintenance strategy are examined in this chapter.Maintenance practitioners believe that the maintenance challenges are helping in formulating maintenance strategies for the company. Maintenance challenges are the major issues faced by maintenance managers in their day-to-day asset maintenance function. Such issues are grouped into technical issues, contract issues, stakeholder issues, internal issues, and unexpected issues. Each of the asset maintenance contributing factors is supported by Industry Quotes in the Industry Quote Box.

Abstract The pressures to make business operations sustainable have been pushing organizations to adopt circular economy (CE) principles. With depleting fossil resources, the oil and gas (O&G) sector is pushed towards recycling limited resources available with it by leveraging CE principles. However, not many studies have been taken up how institutional pressures influence CE‐targeted environmental and economic performances. Drawing on institutional theory, this study examines the moderated‐mediation role of organization flexibility on the effects of institutional pressures on CE performance through environmental management systems (EMSs). Data are collected from 280 firms in Indian O&G sector using questionnaire‐based survey method. The study reveals that organizations leverage EMS to achieve CE performance, and flexible organizations compared with rigid ones are more effective in dealing with coercive pressures by leveraging EMS. These insights may help policymakers to formulate regulatory framework judiciously that encourages firms to adopt EMS in making their operations environmentally sustainable.

Indian Proterozoic geology includes a group of less disturbed and unmetamorphosed platformal sediment packages hosted within cratonic nucleii of Peninsular India and offers scope to study profound and irreversible changes in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere during the early history of the planet. Studies in these basin fills in the last two decades have resulted in significant advancements with respect to initiation and evolution of the basins in different tectonic settings, relationship with accretion and breakup of the supercontinents, paleoclimate and paleo-weathering patterns and ancient basin water chemistry. Acknowledging all these aspects, this contribution explored the possible connections of the basins with the ‘supercontinent’ cycles, viz. Columbia and Rodinia through this time period. From collation of geochronologic data, it is concluded that the most prevalent dates obtained from the basin fills fall in 1650–1450 Ma and 1100–1000 Ma. time bracket, concomitant with the breakup of supercontinent ‘Columbia’ and the amalgamation of the following assembly of supercontinent ‘Rodinia’. A few may also be connected with the formation of ‘Columbia’, viz. Aravalli and Cuddapah, and the fragmentation of Rodinia, viz. Marwar.

Due to recent advances in wireless technologies, wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are expected in the near future to fully handle content-rich multimedia services with various quality of services (QoS) guarantee. Unlike traditional data applications, multimedia applications require QoS support in order to satisfy the user's service requirements. Admission control has been advocated as a promising approach to tackle this challenging issue since it is a key management function for which a new flow is admitted based on the condition that the QoS requirements of all flows in the network can still be met after the new flow begins. In this paper, a Rate Adaptive Routing on Cliques Admission Control protocol (so-called RA-RCAC) for WMNs is proposed, which is able to provide feedbacks to the application layer whenever congestion occurs in the network. The RA-RCAC scheme merges the design features of two chosen benchmarking schemes, namely, an Interference-Aware Admission Control and QoS routing protocol in WMN (so-called IAAC) and a distributed admission control protocol for WMNs (so-called RCAC) to produce a protocol design that satisfies the QoS guarantee. Our proposed RA-RCAC protocol is evaluated using simulation analysis. The performance evaluation results demonstrate its superiority over the aforementioned benchmark schemes in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, and loss ratio performance evaluation metrics.