Properties of natural gas include gas-specific gravity, pseudocritical pressure and temperature, viscosity, compressibility factor, gas density, and gas compressibility. Knowledge of these property values is essential for designing and analyzing natural gas production and processing systems.
Because natural gas is a complex mixture of light hydrocarbons with a minor amount of inorganic compounds, it is always desirable to find the composition of the gas through measurements. Once the gas omposition is known, gas properties can usually be estimated using established correlations with confidence.