Explosion and Pollutant Dispersion of Oil Storage Tank

The explosion of Oil Storage Tanks, Pollutant Dispersion CFD Simulation, ANSYS Fluent Training

The present problem simulates the Explosion and Pollutant Dispersion of an Oil Storage Tank in an urban area by ANSYS Fluent software.

In fact, in areas with oil reservoirs, one of the potential dangers is explosion. The explosion of these oil tanks can release many pollutants such as carbon dioxide into the environment. Suppose there are residential areas and industrial units around the oil reservoirs in the mentioned area.

In that case, the spread of these pollutants from the explosion and their transfer to the surrounding environment can be very dangerous and affect people’s lives.

The present model is designed in three dimensions using Design Modeler software. The model includes 6.6 km long, 4.6 km wide, and a 200 m high computational domain.

There is an area for oil reservoirs and several areas for residential or industrial areas. In the special area of oil tanks, 18 cylindrical oil tanks are drawn.

The meshing has been done using ANSYS Meshing software, and the mesh type is unstructured. The element number is 1746979.

Explosion Methodology

In the present modeling, a sample urban area is defined as a computational area with several oil reservoirs. Around these oil reservoirs, there are several residential areas and industrial units.

Whereas large chemical reactions occur during an explosion, in which different gaseous species are involved, The model of Species Transport has been used. Thus, the number of gaseous species modeled in this simulation is equal to 7, which includes CO2, SO2, NO2, CO, H2O, C, and air.

Therefore, in the whole computational domain, the air is present as the main fluid. Energy sources and gaseous species caused by the explosion are defined in the area related to oil reservoirs.

Thus, in the ​​oil reservoirs, energy (139072.7126 W/m), CO2 (0.135765835 kg/m3s), H2O (0.067882918 kg/m3s), CO (0.004699587 kg/m3.s), NO2 (0.00000000626612 kg/m3.s), SO2 (0.000130544 kg/m3.s), and C (0.006788292 kg/m3.s) is defined as heat and gas sources.

Explosion and Pollutant Dispersion of Oil Storage Tank Conclusion

This work aims to investigate the transfer of these pollutants to the surrounding residential and industrial areas due to wind. The wind speed and direction can affect how these pollutants are released in the urban area.

In this model, the north and west of the urban area are defined as the inlet boundaries of airflow, and the east and south are defined as the outlet boundaries.

The open airflow enters the urban area with a temperature of 300 K and a speed equivalent to 20 m/s and at an angle of 60 degrees (velocity in the x-direction is equal to 20 * cos60 and velocity in the y-direction is equal to 20 * sin60).

After the solution process, three-dimensional contours related to the temperature and volume fraction of each gaseous species in the model are obtained. The results show that the pollutant will affect the urban zone in case of an explosion of the mentioned oil storage tanks.