Abstract
This report presents a new method to calculate the blast effects originating
from an exploding vessel of liquefied gas. Adequate blast calculation
requires full knowledge of the blast source characteristics, that
is, the release and subsequent evaporation rate of the flashing liquid.
Because the conditions that allow explosive evaporation are not entirely
clear and the evaporation rate of a flashing liquid is unknown, safe
assumptions have been adopted as the starting point in the modeling.
The blast effects from a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion
(BLEVE) are numerically computed by imposing the vapor pressure of
a flashing liquid as boundary condition for the gas dynamics of expansion.
The numerical modeling is quantitatively explored just for liquefied
propane. In addition, this paper demonstrates that often an estimate
of BLEVE blast effects is possible with very simple acoustic volume
source expressions.The modeling shows that the rupture of a pressure
vessel containing a liquefied gas in free space develops a blast
of significant strength only if the vessel nearly instantaneously
disintegrates. Even if a rupture and the consequent release and evaporation
of a liquefied gas extend over just a short period of time, the blast
effects are minor. � 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers
Process Saf Prog, 2006
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