Abstract
The oil boom in the North Dakota oilfields has resulted in improved energy security for the US. Recent estimates of oil production rates indicate that even completion of the Keystone XL pipeline will only fractionally reduce the need to ship this oil by rail. Current levels of oil shipment have already caused significant strain on rail infrastructure and led to crude oil train derailments, resulting in loss of life and property. Treating crude oil as a multicomponent liquid fuel, this work aims to understand crude oil droplet burning and thereby lead to methods to improve train fire safety. Sub-millimeter sized droplets of Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado, and Bakken crude were burned, and the process was recorded with charge-couple device (CCD) and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) high-speed cameras. The resulting images were post-processed to obtain various combustion parameters, such as burning rate, ignition delay, total combustion time, and microexplosion behavior. The soot left behind was analyzed using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). This data is expected be used for validation of combustion models for complex multicomponent liquid fuels, and subsequently in the modification of combustion properties of crude oil using various additives to make it safer to transport.
Highlights
Recent decades have seen growing energy demand due to the increasing trend of industrialization in the world as well as population growth
Petroleum, is a major source of energy in power generation systems, and most countries import crude oil and its derivatives to cope with their increasing energy demand
In 2016, the US became the largest exporter of refined petroleum products [1]
Summary
Recent decades have seen growing energy demand due to the increasing trend of industrialization in the world as well as population growth. Petroleum, is a major source of energy in power generation systems, and most countries import crude oil and its derivatives to cope with their increasing energy demand. With rail crude supplying more than half of the east coast refineries’ feedstock [3], the stress on the aging rail infrastructure has been thrown into sharp relief, with many crude oil derailments and crashes in recent years. These generally result in devastating oil fires and loss of life and property [4,5,6]
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