Modelling the mitigation of hydrogen deflagrations in a nuclear waste silo ullage by depleting the oxygen concentration with nitrogen

摘要

It is expected that significant transient releases of hydrogen could occur during the decommissioning of a nuclear waste storage plant that would result in a transient flammable atmosphere. Interest has been expressed in the use of nitrogen dilution in a vented silo ullage space in order to reduce the oxygen level and thereby mitigate the overpressure rise should a hydrogen-air deflagration occur. In the work presented here the data characterising the influence of oxygen depletion via nitrogen dilution upon the burning velocity of hydrogen-air mixtures have been obtained using the COSILAB code (and also compared with experimental test data). These data have then been used with the FLACS-HYDROGEN CFD-tool to try to predict the potential explosion overpressure reduction that might be achieved using oxygen depletion (via nitrogen dilution), for a transient hydrogen bubble sudden gaseous release (SGR) scenario occurring in a silo ullage type geometry. The simulation results suggest that using nitrogen dilution to deplete the oxygen levels to 12.5% or 9.9% would produce only a relatively modest reduction in the predicted peak overpressure. However, with an oxygen depletion level of 7%, the rate of pressure rise is more substantially slowed and the predicted maximum pressure rise is significantly reduced.