Deduction of a Novel Design Equation for Natural Gas Pipelines and Application

Based on mass and momentum balance, the paper presents an analytical equation derived from a fundamental differential equation describing compressible fluid flow in pipes without neglecting kinetic energy term.The equation gives a functional relationship among flow rate, inlet pressure and outlet pressure and is suitable for pipeline engineering study on laminar flow and stationary flow, and any pipeline topology and configuration, including size and orientation.Case study results show that the agreement of predicted results with field date is excellent, and it can be used to solve working conditions and issues in complicated pipeline networks and has a broad prospect in engineering application.