Dangerous Clouds Research Articles

How to Become a Philosopher from the (dis)Comfort of Your Own Home

How to Become a Philosopher from the (dis)Comfort of Your Own Home

Research on Influence Factors of Leakage and Diffusion of 5 m3 High Pressure Hydrogen Cylinder

According to the characteristics of 5m3 hydrogen cylinder in a hydrogenation station, the influence factors of high-pressure hydrogen leakage and diffusion under different leakage aperture, cylinder pressure and wind speed were studied by using the safety analysis software PHAST. The results show that the area of downstream dangerous cloud cluster and diffusion isolation area increases with the increase of leakage diameter, cylinder pressure and wind speed. The aperture has a great influence on the mass leakage rate and the distribution range of cloud clusters, while the cylinder pressure mainly affects the distribution of cloud clusters. The influence of pressure on mass leakage rate is not as obvious as the influence of aperture. The wind speed has no effect on the mass leakage rate, and has only a slight impact on the downstream cloud cluster distribution.

HAZARD EVALUATION USING ALOHA TOOL IN STORAGE AREA OF AN OIL REFINERY

During accident process equipment, storage area and associated accessories can release hazardous material very quickly and insignificant quantity to spread out in dangerous cloud throughout the plant site and local communities. Areal location of Hazardous Atmosphere (ALOHA) is a software design specially in responding to hazardous material releases. Aloha models assess key hazards such as toxicity, flammability, thermal radiation and explosion over pressure related to chemical releases in the event of either fire or explosion. This paper covers actual damage distances due to flammable liquids and gases of oil refinery stored in finished product section in different pressure vessels. Catastrophic rupture of the individual product has been described in imaging worst scenario and damage distances for heat loads has been calculated. The output of ALOHA Tool provide the worst case scenario consequences results on plant and nearby local community and summarizes the useful fact for onsite emergency plan of oil refinery.

Poor weather conditions and flight operations: Implications for air transport hazard management in Nigeria

The growth of aviation industry in Nigeria and the increased adoption of air transportation as one of the best means of transport have been obstructed by various weather hazards. There is a greater need for aviation weather forecasters to deliver quality forecasts. It is therefore necessary to identify the most dangerous and most common weather hazards which are detrimental to the aviation industry so as to enhance the expertise on addressing them. This paper examined various weather hazards which include thunderstorm, fog, dust haze and line squall that affect flight operation such as flight delays, diversion and cancellation. The study revealed that fog accounted for 13.2% of flight cancellation at the airport and line squall similarly accounted for 10.1% of delays, 8.4% of diversion and 20% of cancellation from 2000-2009 at the airport. The paper recommends that with the aid of improved forecasting tools such as Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) and Radar network which provides different images of clouds every fifteen minutes, it becomes much easier to identify dangerous clouds and give prior warning to the aviation industry.Key Words: Flight operation, Cancellation, Diversion, Line squall, Fog, Thunderstorm

Risk assessment of accidental spills of toxic and flammable liquids on land

The main objective of this paper is the assessment of the environmental impact due to accidental spills of toxic and flammable liquids on land. Different case studies of possible accidents in the State of Qatar were considered. An EPA‐based dispersion model was utilized to estimate the size and location of the dangerous clouds generated by such spills at different elapsed times. Three case studies of possible accidents in the State of Qatar involving gasoline were considered. Due to the transient nature of the dispersion processes in the case studies, the results showed clearly the phenomenon of growth and decay of the generated dangerous clouds. An interface between the dynamic results of the dispersion software and the static data of the Qatar geographical information system (GIS) allowed the immediate identification of the major landmarks affected by the considered accidents. These data would be of great help in developing an emergency evacuation plan for such accidents.