Abstract:

As the leakage rate is one of the important factors of natural gas pipeline operation that have not been well defined，it is necessary and important to give an analytical equation for the leakage flow rate of natural gas pipelines to improve the accuracy of simulation and estimation of leakage accidents.Based on the theories of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics，together with the use of ideal gas equation of state，adiabatic equation and energy conservation equation，the natural gas leakage process was studied and divided into two leakage phases，the critical phase and the sub-critical phase.Equations were obtained for calculating the leakage flow rate of the whole leakage process，and examples were given to analyze the influences of various parameters on leakage flow rate.