Experimental study on unconfined methane explosion: Explosion characteristics and overpressure prediction method

Explosion accidents have become the main threat for the high-efficiency use of cleaner gas energy sources, such as natural gas. During an explosion, obstacle causing flame acceleration is the main reason for the increase of the explosion overpressure, which still remains to be fully understood. In this research, field experiments were conducted in a 1 m³ cubic frame apparatus to investigate the effect of built-in obstacles on unconfined methane explosion. Cage-like obstacles were constructed using square steel rods with different cross section size. The results demonstrated that the flame could get accelerated due to the hydrodynamic instability and obstacle-induced turbulence, which enhanced the explosion overpressure. In the near field, the overpressure wave travelled slower and the maximum overpressure could almost keep constant. Reducing the cross section size, or increasing the obstacle height or the obstacle number per layer could determine the rise of the maximum overpressure, the maximum pressure rising rate and the overpressure impulse. For uniformly constructed obstacles, self-similar theory was chosen to measure the influence of the hydrodynamic instability, and a parameter β was adopted to measure the flame acceleration caused by obstacle-induced turbulence, the value of which was 2 in this research. Based on the acoustic theory, an overpressure prediction model was proposed and the predicted results agreed with the measured values better than previous models, such as TNT equivalency model and TNO multi-energy model.     

Risk-based quantitative method for determining blast-resistant and defense loads of petrochemical buildings

Petrochemical buildings are usually distributed near chemical installations and have a high risk of explosion because of the concentration of people. In order to effectively design and protect buildings against explosion, it is needed to determine the blast-resistant and defense loads reasonably. Based on the theory of risk, a triangular pyramid explosion risk model was established in this study, which combined the overpressure p, duration t, and frequency f of the explosion scene at the same time. The first principle of “acceptable cumulative frequency” and the key principle of “maximum explosion risk” were formulated. According to this method, the explosion risk of eight leakage units with 10 groups of leakage hole size and three dangerous wind directions were obtained. According to the cumulative explosion frequency curve and the explosion risk curve, blast-resistant and defense loads of the four walls were determined quantitatively. Among the four walls, the explosion overpressure were 44.0–74.5 kPa, and the corresponding duration were 34.1–39.1 ms. The cumulative explosion frequency were 2.11E−5 to 8.58E−5 times annually. The explosion risk value were 3.64E−3 to 5.35E−3 kPa·ms annually. The results indicated that it was of great importance for the calculation of the explosion risk to reasonably divide the leakage unit and determine the leakage frequency. The explosion scene and its frequency, the volume of the obstructed region, and the distance of the explosion source were the key variables that affected the explosive load. The final blast-resistant and defense load values were found in the case of the middle hole size leakage. Blast-resistant and defense loads not only met the risk acceptance standard but also considered the overpressure and the duration of explosion. At present, they have been extensively applied in the blast-resistant design and engineering transformation of buildings in SINOPEC.     

基于联系云的地下水水质可拓评价模型

地下水水质评价受诸多不确定因素的影响,评价指标具有模糊性、随机性和离散性特征.为真实反映指标的分布特征,提高地下水水质评价的合理性与可靠性,在此将可拓学与联系云理论耦合,提出能够描述评价指标在分类等级间转换态势的联系云可拓模型,即基于指标分类标准确定联系云数字特征,生成有限区间内的联系云与构建联系云可拓矩阵,实现统一定量描述地下水水质评价指标的确定和不确定性,然后结合权重,分析待评价物元与地下水水质等级的联系,综合确定待评物元的水质等级,并给出评价结果的可信程度.实例应用及与投影寻踪和模糊物元耦合方法结果的对比表明,本文模型评价结果与投影寻踪模糊物元方法的结果基本吻合,且基于联系云可拓模型评价地下水水质等级置信因子均小于0.01,更有效可行,并克服了可拓方法不能反映评价指标模糊性特征的缺陷.     

气相化学反应中的云盖效应

本文在ＣＢＭ－Ｉ机理的基础上考虑了ＯＨ和ＨＯ２自由基对ＳＯ２的氧化作用和云对光解率的影响，定量研究了气相色化学反应中的云盖效应。结果表明，云的存在将改变整个反应体系的平衡，气态物对云的响应是非线的。     

二甲基硫的海-气通量及其对环境的影响

综述了目前国内外对二甲基硫（DMS）的海一气通量的研究状况，指出了DMS的海一气通量受很多因素的影响。运用不同的模型计算值相差很大。此外本文着重论述DMS进入大气后被OH和NO3等自由基的氧化机化及其氧化产物对酸雨酸雾的贡献以及DMS、凝云结核（CCN）、气候 系统之间的关系。     

Influence of built-in obstacles on unconfined vapor cloud explosion

The obstacle structure in the vapor cloud has a significant influence on the gas explosion. Obstacles could not only lead to the acceleration of flame, but also they may occupy some space, thus affecting the amount of combustible gas. In this paper, a new two-step method was proposed to respectively study the effects of the obstacles amount and volume blockage ratio (VBR) on the gas explosion by using Computation Fluid Dynamic software AutoReaGas, and the obstacles in the vapor cloud were set to “Solid” instead of “Subgrid”. Based on the results and analysis, it is found that the peak overpressure and the maximum combustion rate rise with the increase of the number of obstacles for a single VBR, which indicated that the vapor cloud explosion of more obstacles was more dangerous for a single VBR. However, under a single number of obstacles, the peak overpressure and the maximum combustion rate increase firstly and then decrease as VBR increases and reach the highest at the VBR of 0.74, which indicated that the intensity of vapor cloud explosion reach a peak at a certain VBR in the middle instead of the largest. In addition, the existence and structure of obstacles have little effect on the size of explosion fireball when the size and concentration of combustible gas cloud are the same.     

A study of the blast wave shape from elongated VCEs

Elongated congestion patterns are common at chemical processing and petroleum refining facilities due to the arrangement of processing units. The accidental vapor cloud explosion (VCE) which occurred at the Buncefield, UK facility involved an elongated congested volume formed by the trees and undergrowth along the site boundary. Although elongated congested volumes are common, there have been few evaluations reported for the blast loads produced by elongated VCEs. Standard VCE blast load prediction techniques do not directly consider the impact of this congested volume geometry versus a more compact geometry.This paper discusses an evaluation performed to characterize the blast loads from elongated VCEs and to identify some significant differences in the resulting blast wave shape versus those predicted by well-known VCE blast load methodologies (e.g., BST and TNO MEM). The standard blast curves are based on an assumption that the portion of the flammable gas cloud participating in the VCE is hemispherical and located at grade level. The results of this evaluation showed that the blast wave shape for an elongated VCE in the near-field along the long-axis direction is similar to that for an acoustic wave generated in hemispherical VCEs with a low flame speed. Like an acoustic wave, an elongated VCE blast wave has a very quick transition from the positive phase peak pressure to the negative phase peak pressure, relative to the positive phase duration. The magnitude of the applied negative pressure on a building face depends strongly on the transition time between the positive and negative phase peak pressures, and this applied negative phase can be important to structural response under certain conditions. The main purpose of this evaluation was to extend previous work in order to investigate how an elongated VCE geometry impacts the resultant blast wave shape in the near-field. The influence of the normalized flame travel distance and the flame speed on the blast wave shape was examined. Deflagration and deflagration-to-detonation transition regimes were also identified for unconfined elongated VCEs as a function of the normalized flame travel distance and flame speed attained at a specified flame travel distance.     

The Role of Cloud Processing in the Relationship Between Wet Deposited Sulphur and Sulphur Dioxide Emissions

It is well established that wet deposition of sulphate in the UKhas fallen by a much smaller fraction than have emissions of sulphur dioxide. Dry deposition of sulphur has decreased in proportion to the decline in emissions. A number of suggestionshave been made which offer possible explanations for this non-linearity between emissions and wet deposition. In this paper amodel of the processing of sulphur dioxide by aqueous phase cloudchemistry in a cloudy boundary layer is presented. This work doesnot simulate all the details of the mechanisms by which sulphate is incorporated into precipitation. It does, however, explorethe non-linearity of this oxidation process. It is shown that theoxidation of sulphur dioxide, in these conditions, over the UK isdominated by oxidation by ozone. The rate of sulphate productionis then controlled by the availability of the one basic trace gasin the atmosphere ammonia. Using realistic concentrations of thereacting species this is found to simulate well the observed non-linearity. The model predicts that sulphate and sulphur dioxideconcentrations will be uncorrelated in the cloudy boundary layerbut that ammonium and sulphate will be well correlated. Fieldobservations at a cloudy site in Northern England are consistentwith these predictions.     

内蒙古草原光合有效辐射的计算方法

2002年夏季,对内蒙古草原太阳分光辐射以及气象因素进行了同步观测。依据一定的物理基础,在对实测资料进行分析的基础上,计算得到了内蒙古草原地区光合有效辐射某一时段累计值的经验公式。实际天气条件下,计算结果与观测值比较接近,该经验公式的适用性亦比较好。根据不同条件,可以选择不同的因子来计算光合有效辐射。当选择全部因子时,计算值与观测值的最大相对偏差为8 13%,平均相对偏差为2 45%。研究表明,大气中所有物质对光合有效辐射的吸收作用小于它们的散射作用。