Experimental Investigation of Plume Diffusion Behavior of LNG Accident Release Underwater

Abstract

To deal with the significantly serious problem of environmental pollution, the use of clean energy is vigorously promoted by governments and corporations in all countries. Therefore, the offshore transportation and trade of LNG has become the main way of energy supplication in cross regional. The potential risk of LNG release from ships or offshore pipelines may cause disastrous consequences, which requires a better consideration and evaluation of the consequences of LNG accidental release. The main purpose of this paper is to understand the special physical phenomena of LNG underwater leakage and the dynamic behavior of rising plume. A small-scale indoor underwater leakage experimental platform was designed and built in a wind tunnel. The plume rising behavior of underwater release of the cryogenic liquid were recorded by a high-speed camera. Through the image processing techniques, the physical model of cryogenic liquid heat transfer underwater was established and verified. In addition, the effects of different sizes and pattern of the orifices and release pressures on plume radius were evaluated. An empirical relationship for predicting the plume diffusion radius under different pool sizes was established based on the method of dimensionless analysis.