Thermal calculation of the electric tracing buried gas pipeline

In order to effectively inhibit hydrate formation in the gas pipeline, the numerical method and calculation formula for the electric tracing buried gas pipeline are proposed through comprehensively considering factors in many aspects, such as soil temperature's change, natural gas physical parameters according to heat transfer theory of fluid flowing in the circular tube with multilayer cylindrical walls. The numerical method and calculation formula have been adopted in the site calculation. Under the conditions of constant temperature at the wellhead of gas well, the outlet temperature of pipeline wrapped with electrical tracing strip is increased by 3.8 ℃ to 19.8 ℃, the relative error between calculated results and field measured results is less than 5%, which indicates that the derived calculation formula and prepared calculation software can fully meet the requirements of oil field production.