Abstract
Recent explosions with devastating consequences have re-emphasized the relevance of fire safety and explosion research. From earlier works, the severity of the explosion has been said to depend on various factors such as the ignition location, type of a combustible mixture, enclosure configuration, and equivalence ratio. Explosion venting has been proposed as a safety measure in curbing explosion impact, and the design of safety vent requires a deep understanding of the explosion phenomenon. To address this, the Explosion Venting Analyzer (EVA)—a mathematical model predicting the maximum overpressure and characterizing the explosion in an enclosure—has been recently developed and coded (Process Saf. Environ. Prot. 99 (2016) 167). The present work is devoted to methane explosions because the natural gas—a common fossil fuel used for various domestic, commercial, and industrial purposes—has methane as its major constituent. Specifically, the dynamics of methane-air explosion in vented cylindrical enclosures is scrutinized, computationally and experimentally, such that the accuracy of the EVA predictions is validated by the experiments, with the Cantera package integrated into the EVA to identify the flame speeds. The EVA results for the rear-ignited vented methane-air explosion show good agreement with the experimental results.
Highlights
Published: 15 February 2021Recent explosions in Beirut, Lebanon [1], Baltimore, MD, USA [2], and Ajman, UAE [3], which all occurred within one week in August 2020, and claimed numerous lives and expensive properties, reinitialize the importance of fire safety, with a focus on scrutinizing of the nature of the explosions
The present work showcased the capability of using the Explosion Venting Analyzer (EVA) model [20,21] to predict the pressure evolution in the process of methane-air mixture explosions in vented cylindrical vessels
It is shown that the EVA over-predicts the peak pressure for small and medium vent area of 67.9 cm2 and 86.6 cm2 but under-predicts the peak pressure when the vent area is as large as 132.7 cm2
Summary
Published: 15 February 2021Recent explosions in Beirut, Lebanon [1], Baltimore, MD, USA [2], and Ajman, UAE [3], which all occurred within one week in August 2020, and claimed numerous lives and expensive properties, reinitialize the importance of fire safety, with a focus on scrutinizing of the nature of the explosions. Understanding the dynamics of an accidental gaseous explosion would provide a way to develop innovative solutions to prevent subsequent explosions. These novel solutions can help to reduce the frequency of occurrence and mitigate the impacts of an explosion. Explosion venting has been a way of suppressing the drastic effects of an accidental explosion by reducing the maximum overpressure in the enclosure Earlier studies on this topic have spanned from the works of Bradley and Mitcheson [4,5] to that of Mulpuru and Wilkin [6], along with subsequent collaborative efforts to develop a model predicting the dynamics of explosion for a hydrogen-air mixture. Other empirical models developed to predict the pressure evolution as well as the peak overpressures in an enclosure included (though not limited to) the FM Global models by Bauwens et al [7,8,9], which were based
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