On 17 April 2013, an explosion occurred at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility in West, Texas. The explosion at West Fertilizer resulted from an intense fire in the seed and storage area of the facility that led to the detonation of approximately 30 tons of ammonium nitrate stored inside a wooden receiving bin. The explosion occurred while emergency services personnel were responding to a fire at the facility. Fifteen people were killed, more than 250 were injured, and numerous buildings were damaged or destroyed. This article presents the results of our investigation into the cause and origin of the explosion event, which included (1) early video footage which showed the room where the initial fire originates and (2) applying advanced blast techniques to determine the quantity of ammonium nitrate that likely detonated during the blast. These techniques included near-field blast effects (e.g. the resulting crater left by the blast) as well as the far-field blast damage resulting in the neighboring community.
In recent years, particular interest has been direct to the issues of risk associated with the storage, transport and use of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) due to the increasing consideration that it is receiving for energy applications. Consequently, a series of experimental and modeling studies to analyze the behavior of LNG have been carried out to collect an archive of evaporation, dispersion and combustion information, and several mathematical models have been developed to represent LNG dispersion in realistic environments and to design mitigation barriers. \ud
This work uses Computational Fluid Dynamics codes to model the dispersion of a dense gas in the atmosphere after accidental release. In particular, it will study the dispersion of LNG due to accidental breakages of a pipeline and it will analyze how it is possible to mitigate the dispersing cloud through walls and curtains of water vapor and air, also providing a criterion for the design of such curtains
Vapor barriers are widely used to contain the release of flammable mixtures in LNG facilities in the United States. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling tool FLACS has been validated and accepted for detailed consequence modeling of flammable vapor dispersion scenarios and includes capabilities to assess the impact of vapor barriers at varying heights and locations. While every plant design is unique and the optimization of vapor barriers often requires several iterations, guidance on where to begin is often limited. This paper will detail a parametric study on vapor barrier height and placement for different release rates to establish a basis for beginning a vapor barrier design.
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