Study of the Interaction Between a High-Pressure Jet and Horizontal Tanks using CFD

Accidental high-pressure flammable gas releases are among the most relevant hazards in the process safety, and consequences could be severe. In the recent decades, there have been numerous efforts to study high-pressure jets in open field (i.e., free jets). Easy-to-use mathematical models have been developed, to rapidly assess the main physical variables involved in safety evaluations. However, in a realistic scenario, the accidental leak may involve either the ground or a piece of equipment. As demonstrated by recent works, when a jet interacts with an obstacle, its behavior can significantly change. Therefore, the mathematical models extrapolated for the free jet scenario could be a source of incorrect predictions. Focusing on the scenario of an accidental high-pressure unignited flammable jet, this work shows how the presence of one or two obstacles, placed at a different distance from the source of the leak, can influence the lower flammability limit cloud extent of methane. Varying the height of the source term, the effect of the interaction among the jet, both the obstacles, and the ground was systematically studied through a Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis.