Simulation of Large-Scale LNG Pool Fires Using FireFoam

Abstract

Numerical simulations have been conducted for a range of liquefied natural gas (LNG) pool fires on land and water using FireFOAM, the large eddy simulation (LES)–based fire simulation code within the framework of open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) toolbox OpenFOAM®. The studied pool diameters range from 14–400 m with cross winds from 1.6–9.6 m/s. The code uses the extended eddy dissipation concept (EDC) and a newly developed soot model based on the laminar smoke point concept. For the low-temperature (111.65–200 K) thermodynamic data of natural gas, the nine-coefficient correlations in the NASA thermodynamic database are used. Comparison between the predictions and measurements were carried out for the first four cases where full-scale test data are available. For all cases, the variations of flame length, tilt angle, and surface emissive power with LNG pool diameters are analyzed. New nonlinear correlations for predicting length-to-diameter ratio and tilt angle are also proposed.

Keywords:

• Cross wind
• Extended eddy dissipation concept
• Fire safety
• Large eddy simulation
• LNG fire

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We would like to acknowledge Dr. Siaka Dembele of Kingston University, London, for helpful discussion concerning the SEP calculations.