New approach to natural gas quality determination

This paper reviews the existing normative documents in Ukraine and foreign countries concerning natural gas quality requirements. The analysis showed maturity of Ukrainian normative base in this specific field compared to international and regional (e.g. European) norms. The need to harmonize regulations is demonstrated using the common practice in oil and gas industry.The analysis of existing methods for determination of natural gas heating value is considered. The correlation analysis for the purpose of determination of an optimal quantity of parameters for natural gas heating value control is performed. This article suggests a new method for measuring natural gas heating value, which is based on multi-parameter approximation of heating value as a function of sound speed in natural gas, nitrogen and carbon dioxide concentration at standard temperature and pressure using artificial neural network.