The Application of Numerical Simulation to Liquid Pipeline Leakage at LNG Terminal in China

In 2018, China's natural gas import reached 90.39 million tons, and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) import was 53.78 million tons, accounting for 59.5% of total natural gas imports. With the construction of LNG terminals, more studies on the leakage of LNG storage and transportation facilities have emerged to prevent catastrophic consequences such as explosions and frostbite. However, most of previous researches focused on gas pipeline leakage after LNG gasification, and few of those have been done on LNG liquid pipeline leakage. In this paper, Fluent software is used to numerically simulate the process of LNG liquid pipeline leakage. After the occurrence of LNG leakage, it will suffer the process of endothermic, evaporation, and diffusion, which is considered as a two-phase diffusion process. The Euler-Lagrangian method is introduced to simulate the diffusion process of gas phase and liquid phase separately. In the simulation, the liquid phase is regarded as discrete droplets for discrete processing. The movement trajectory, heat transfer process and evaporation process of each droplet are tracked respectively. Different from the liquid phase, the gas phase is regarded as a continuous phase and the Navier-Stokes equations are adopted for calculation. Thereafter, coupling calculations of two phase are performed to determine the concentration field and temperature field of the LNG liquid pipeline leakage. As a supplement to this research, the influence of wind speed on LNG leakage and diffusion process is analysed in detail. Finally, the numerical simulation method is applied to a coastal LNG terminal in northern China to determine the distribution of natural gas concentration and temperature, as well as delimit the combustion range. The results can provide scientific reference for the delimitation of risky zones and the formulation of emergency response strategy.