Outlet Pressure in Gas Transportation Pipelines

Designing a long-distance pipeline for transportation of natural gas requires knowledge of flow formulas for calculating capacity and pressure requirements. The friction loss component applies to any type of flow at any pipe angle and causes a pressure drop in the direction of flow.

In gas transportation pipelines, the gas compressibility factor depends on pressure and the friction factor depends on flow rate which affects the pressure drop through the pipeline. Several correlations are developed to estimate gas flow capacity through pipelines considering these effects. In addition, the outlet pressure can be estimated using measured inlet pressure and gas rate.

Reference: Petroleum Production Engineering, Boyun Guo, Xinghui Liu, Xuehao Tan