Open Access

Based on methane from renewable resources, LNG is an alternative fuel for heavy and long-distance traffic in land transport. Contrary to its positive properties, the fuel contains risks from an explosion and extremely low temperatures for personal and infrastructure safety. CFD-models are suitable for doing risk analyses for arbitrary scenarios. For examining how to model for risk research the dispersion of LNG-vapor, this paper contains a model variant study, with an evaluation by experiments. This paper describes the use of the CFD-code ANSYS Fluent for simulating experiments of the ‘LNG Safety Program Phase II‘. The content of the well-documented experiments was the research of the vaporization rate of LNG on land and the dispersion of LNG-vapor in the air. Based on the comparison to two experiments, overall 12 CFD-model variants with varying thermal and turbulence parameters were examined how they affect the transient LNG-vapor dispersion in air. The definition of turbulence-boundary-condition at the domain borders had the biggest impact on modeling, followed by the turbulence model. The most accurate model variant had been applied for observing the spreading behavior of LNG-vapor in the air after evaporation on land and analyzing the influence of the LNG-composition to the dispersion. The results show that the mixture of LNG-vapor and the air in the free field is cooler than the ambient air and spreads like a heavy gas on the ground.

In the course of decarbonizing the energy industry, cryogenic energy carriers are seen as having great potential. This is because they allow significantly higher volumetric energy densities to be achieved than when these energy carriers are stored at typical temperatures on Earth. This is important for numerous energy-intensive applications, such as those found in all transport sectors. Important cryogenic energy carriers include liquefied hydrogen (LH2) and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The challenge is to keep the energy carrier cold for a long time. This is achieved by the implementation of thermal super-insulations (TSI) systems based on multilayer insulations (MLI), microspheres, perlites, and vacuum for instance, and which have proven to be effective in several cryogenic applications. However, due to the short period of use, the low number of documented incidents, and the still few investigations carried out in the field, the exploitation of such systems in the transport sector still suffers from insufficient knowledge about the course and consequences of incidents. Accidents involving collisions, fires, and their combination are quite common in the transportation sector and may generate extraordinary loads on the tank and its insulation system, eventually leading to tank failure. The presentation summarizes the findings from the cooperation of the University of Bologna and BAM regarding the experiments on diverse types of super-insulations with the High Temperature Thermal Vacuum Chamber, as well as the model approaches that were developed to calculate the heat transfer and degradation of MLI’s during high thermal exposure. As an outlook the application of the models, the Cryogenic High Temperature Thermal Vacuum Chamber, and the fire test on HGV-components are presented.

The number of vehicles using or transporting cryogenic fuels such as Liquefied Hydrogen (LH2) or Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) increases fast in the land transportation sector. Does this also entail new risks? The storage of cryogenic fuels requires tanks with Thermal Super Insulations (TSI) to keep the fluid cold and limit the formation of boil-off gas. TSI has proven itself in some applications since the middle of the 20th century, but in the land transport sector they are still quite new, where accidents involving fires, collisions, and their combination are to be expected. This work focuses on investigating the behavior of different types of TSI while exposed to a heat source representing a fire. To this aim, a High-Temperature Thermal Vacuum Chamber (HTTVC) was applied, which allows the thermal loading of a thermal insulation material in a vacuum and measuring the heat flow transported through the TSI in parallel. In this study, the results of 6 samples are presented regarding 3 types of MLI, rock wool, perlites, and microspheres. The thermal exposure caused different effects on the samples. In practice, this can be connected to the rapid release of flammable gases as well as to a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion (BLEVE). These results are relevant for reducing the risks to people and infrastructures in the progressive establishment of tanks for cryogenic fluids in our industry and society. The data presented in the study can be used to improve the design of tanks and TSIs, the assessment of accident scenarios, and the development of measures for first responders.

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) aus regenerativen Quellen, stellt einen potenziellen Kraftstoff für den Schwer- und Fernverkehr des Straßenverkehrs dar. Gegenüber seinen positiven Eigenschaften zu dem in diesem Verkehrssektor häufig verwendeten Kraftstoff Diesel birgt der Kraftstoff aber auch Gefahren für Personen und Bauwerke durch seine sehr niedrige Temperatur bei der Speicherung von ca. -160 °C und seine Explosionsfähigkeit in der Gas-Phase. In der Arbeit wurde sich mit der Gefährdung von Personen und Bauwerken hinsichtlich der von LNG ausgehenden Gefahren in Tunneln auseinandergesetzt. Tunnel stellen besonders schützenswerte Bauwerke dar, da aus vorhergehenden Störfällen in Tunneln bekannt ist, dass diese mit hohen Personen-, Bauwerks-, und Volkswirtschaftlichen-Schäden einhergehen können. Untersuchungsschwerpunkt bei der Bewertung von Gefährdungen durch LNG stellte eine Ereigniskaskade bestehend aus Freisetzung, Verdampfung, Stoffausbreitung und Zündung des sich gebildeten explosionsfähigen LNG-Gas/Luft-Gemisches dar. Mit dem Ziel eine solche Ereigniskaskade realitätsnah vorhersagen und zukünftig hierzu Risikoanalysen durchführen zu können wurden innerhalb der Arbeit Parameterstudien sowie Kalibrierungen und Validierungen gegenüber experimentellen Untersuchungen durchgeführt. Mit den Modellen wurden in der Arbeit exemplarische Fallbeispiele zu Störfällen untersucht. Ergebnisse dieser waren, dass Gefährdungen insbesondere von flüssigem LNG nach dessen Freisetzung und der Verbrennung von LNG-Gas/Luft-Gemischen ausgingen.

To accelerate the hydrogen uptake in Europe the project KICstartH2 funded by the European Union arranged the Joint European Summer School (JESS) that deals with several topics around hydrogen. A topic in this framework is the transport and storage of energy by hydrogen. Here cryogenic energy carriers are seen as having great potential. This is because they allow significantly higher volumetric energy densities to be achieved than when these energy carriers are stored at typical temperatures on Earth. This is important for numerous energy-intensive applications, such as those found in all transport sectors. Important cryogenic energy carriers include liquefied hydrogen (LH2) and liquefied natural gas (LNG). This presentation focuses on the physical parameters and methods relevant to the storage of cryogenic fluids.