Numerical investigation of flammable vapour cloud formation from pools of heated organic liquids

The aim of this work is to study the effects of wind velocity, pool length and thickness on the flammable vapour cloud formation from pools of heated organic liquids, covering a wide range of substance properties such as molecular weights and boiling temperatures. To achieve that goal, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been built and implemented in the commercial CFD code ANSYS Fluent. The mathematical model is validated against published experimental data with respect to both pool evaporation and vapour dispersion simulation. The vapour cloud formation is studied in terms of evaporated mass per unit area of the pool, flammable mass of vapours and its fraction of the total released mass, and maximum downwind extent of the flammable cloud. The results of numerical simulation presented in this work provide a better understanding of evaporation and dispersion processes accompanying the formation of a flammable vapour cloud from pools of heated hydrocarbon liquids.