Experimental and numerical study on natural gas explosion evolution in open space under different initial conditions

Abstract

The vapor cloud explosion in open space are greatly affected by the initial conditions of gas cloud and the surrounding environment, while in the gas compressor station, these factors are ubiquitous. While the researches of external influencing factors like the obstacle and initial turbulence effect on natural gas explosion in open space are rare. In this paper, a series of natural gas explosion experiments were conducted and a long-distance natural gas pipeline compressor station was taking as an example to simulate the natural gas leakage and explosion in the typical location. Results showed that the greater the initial turbulence, the greater the peak overpressure of gas explosion. When the initial wind speed is 5 m/s, the peak overpressure can promote 73.4 % higher than that without initial turbulence. However, the overpressure doesn't linearly increase with the increasing of initial wind speed. What's more, the flame speed showed the same law with the overpressure, and the effect of concentration on overpressure is lower than that of initial turbulence and obstacle density. The explosion damaging range in the condenser area is larger than that in the separator area, and the maximum overpressure can reach about 21 kPa and the temperature can reach above 2280K, which provides an important basis for the safety prevention and personnel protection in natural gas compressor station.