Safe Transport and Storage of Pressure Liquefied Hazardous Materials

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

A wide range of pressure liquefied hazardous chemicals such as propane, LPG, crude oil, anhydrous ammonia, chlorine and many others are stored and transported in this country every day. From time to time there are accidents where quantities of these materials are released into the environment. Sometimes these releases are powerful explosions that can lead to blast damage and projectiles, ground loading, fireballs or toxic clouds. The government and industry work together to keep us safe. We must work hard to ensure they have the latest science to support what they do.   We need to understand how fire affects hazardous materials pressure vessels so that we can design cost effective protection systems. We need accurate and reliable analysis methods to ensure these systems will work properly.We are still unable today to predict how quickly a vessel will pressurize when exposed to accidental fire. It is critical that we can predict pressurization rates to  design safe systems. We will conduct experimental research to determine exactly what happens inside a fire impinged pressure vessel holding a hazardous material. We will study fire heat transfer and convection and boiling heat transfer inside the vessel. We will measure temperature distributions inside the vessels using thermocouples and we will determine velocities and boiling characteristics using optical techniques and lasers. We will develop detailed models of how pressure builds up in these vessels using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) so we can predict time to vessel failure. We will also investigate near field hazards from boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions (BLEVE). Many studies have been conducted over the years to better quantify the far field effects. But very little has been done with near field effects. Emergency responders are very interested in near field effects because they may be working in that area. We will conduct small and large scale experiments to measure ground force and near field blast overpressure from a BLEVE. We will use high speed imaging and shadowgraphs to record these events for later analysis. We will carry out CFD to better understand these events including the formation of shock waves and the explosive boiling process. The outcomes of this research will be improved methods and procedures that will be useful to engineers, scientists in the energy, transportation, manufacturing, consulting and construction industries. The outcomes will be valuable to policy makers and regulators who look after the transportation and storage of hazardous materials in Canada, and the world. All of the work will be conducted by MASc and PhD students in an inclusive and equitable learning and working environment. They will learn state of the art analytical and experimental skills that are needed to transport and store hazardous materials. They will learn and practice how to document and present their work to their peers and to society.