Influence of the shape of mitigation barriers on heavy gas dispersion

• Published in: Journal of loss prevention in the process industries Vol. 29; pp. 13 - 21
• Main Authors: Busini, V., Rota, R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01-05-2014; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Fluid dynamics; Gasification; Heavy gas dispersion; Industrial plants; Liquefied natural gas; LNG; Loss control; Mitigation barriers; Obstacles; Risk management; Heavy gas dispersion; Obstacles; Mitigation barriers; LNG
• ISSN: 0950-4230; 1873-3352
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jlp.2014.01.001

Regasification plants have become an emerging risk because their numbers are increasing and concern from the general population towards these systems has grown. Consequently, there is increased interest in investigating the effect of mitigation measures to limit the impact of large accidents on the population living close to the plant. Among the various possible mitigation measures, physical barriers present several advantages; however, it is known that the necessary barrier height can became impracticably large to be effective in mitigating the consequences of a large LNG release. Therefore, computational fluid dynamics models were used in this work to analyze the performance of mitigation barriers with different shapes to investigate the possibility of increasing mitigation barrier efficiency by simply changing the main geometrical characteristics of the barrier such as roughness, battlements, or even holes.
•CFD was used to analyze the performance of mitigation barriers.•Five different shapes of mitigation barriers were investigated.•A relation performances of the barriers vs. the geometry of the walls was found.•LNG cloud inertia is hardly influenced by small changes in the barriers' structure.