Accurate prediction of pressure losses using machine learning for the pipeline transportation of emulsions

One of the significant challenges to designing an emulsion transportation system is predicting frictional pressure losses with confidence. The state-of-the-art method for enhancing reliability in prediction is to employ artificial intelligence (AI) based on various machine learning (ML) tools. Six traditional and tree-based ML algorithms were analyzed for the prediction in the current study. A rigorous feature importance study using RFECV method and relevant statistical analysis was conducted to identify the parameters that significantly contributed to the prediction. Among 16 input variables, the fluid velocity, mass flow rate, and pipe diameter were evaluated as the top predictors to estimate the frictional pressure losses. The significance of the contributing parameters was further validated by estimation error trend analyses. A comprehensive assessment of the regression models demonstrated an ensemble of the top three regressors to excel over all other ML and theoretical models. The ensemble regressor showcased exceptional performance, as evidenced by its high R² value of 99.7 % and an AUC-ROC score of 98 %. These results were statistically significant, as there was a noticeable difference (within a 95 % confidence interval) compared to the estimations of the three base models. In terms of estimation error, the ensemble model outperformed the top base regressor by demonstrating improvements of 6.6 %, 11.1 %, and 12.75 % for the RMSE, MAE, and CV_MSE evaluation metrics, respectively. The precise and robust estimations achieved by the best regression model in this study further highlight the effectiveness of AI in the field of pipeline engineering.