Numerical study on helium dispersion and ventilation in a semi-enclosed channel with FLACS-Hydrogen

FLACS was used to model the dispersion of leaked helium (as a substitute for hydrogen due to their similar properties) based on a real experiment to understand hydrogen leakage behaviour.

Date 02 Nov - 02 Nov

Time 10:00 - 11:00

Event categories

Hydrogen

Training period

1 day

Price pr. Participants

Free to attend

Platform

Zoom

This presentation is a part of the 2022 FLACS User Group (FLUG) Meeting. Fill in the form below to access the recording and dive into the valuable insights shared by industry experts.

About the presentation

Hydrogen, as an energy source or as energy storage, is a key pathway for achieving net-zero targets. However, to support the safe usage of hydrogen at large scales, further investigations on hydrogen leakage should be pursued. Leakage of gaseous hydrogen, especially in confined spaces, can lead to catastrophic outcomes such as uncontrolled fire and explosion.

The current study presents a set of measurement and CFD data to understand the dispersion of leaked light gas in a semi-confined space to support the adoption of hydrogen. A dispersion chamber with dimensions of 4×0.3×0.3m3 was constructed to investigate a baseline gas leakage scenario. In the experiment, hydrogen gas was substituted with helium gas to reduce risk since they have similar properties.

To model the dispersion of leaked helium, FLACS is employed, which is a popular computational fluid dynamics code for risk and safety analysis. The result shows that a good agreement between experiment and numerical data has been achieved, which confirms the accuracy of the model, as well as the suitability of the measurement data. The current results will be useful to further enhance the understanding of hydrogen safety aspects.



About the speaker

Hengrui Liu

Postdoctoral Researcher @ UNSW 

Research Assistant @ Macquarie University

Hengrui Liu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of New South Wales and a Research Assistant at the Macquarie University. He is a FLACS user and has been working on research within CFD, fire safety, fire suppression, multiphase flow and hydrogen safety. These last three years, Hengrui has published 15 journal papers where he focused on numerical studies for several applications, including ejector systems and water-based fire suppression systems.

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