Numerous types of liquid, such as water, oil, and so on, are transported via pipelines. Thus, leakage in the pipelines can cause severe hazards to liquid transportation and pose great risks to industries, environment and dwellers. For the purpose of an accurate identification of the leakage location, a novel location algorithm is proposed in this paper based on the attenuation of negative pressure wave (ANPW). As such, this paper presents some of the first efforts in the investigation of the relationship between the pressure difference and leakage location. This is in direct contrast with the traditional method, which relies on the use of the time difference and the velocity of NPW for leakage detection and location. Accordingly, the ANPW method avoids the potential problems of the traditional NPW method - the difficulty for pinpointing the time difference and the disturbance of the velocity of NPW by the liquid flow rate in the pipeline. To explore this new method, this paper firstly deduces the propagation equation of NPW along with the pipeline using the momentum equation and the continuity equation. This is followed by proposing that the ANPW method depends on the change of pressure in place of the time difference. Thirdly, a test of the method in the actual pipeline and comparison between the ANPW method and the time difference method are conducted. Yielding the largest error of 1.161% and the smallest error of 0.355%, the experiment leads to the conclusion that the new method can be applied to the location of pipeline leakage. (C) 2019 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.