Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PHAST Tutorial Manual
PHAST Tutorial Manual
PHAST Tutorial Manual
Tutorial Manual
DNV SOFTWARE Palace House, 3 Cathedral Street, London SE19DE, UK http://www.dnv.com/software Copyright Det Norske Veritas. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction or broadcast of this material is permitted without the express written consent of DNV. Contact software.risk@dnv.com for more information.
Contents
Chapter 1 An Introduction to PHAST 1
In the first chapter you open an example analysis provided with the program, explore its main features, and run the calculations and view the results without having to enter or change any input data.
Chapter 2
18
The second chapter guides you through the process of setting up a Study Folder for performing consequence calculations for a range of common types of hazardous event. The tutorial supplies all of the input values that you will need to complete the analysis.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction
The first line in the Message Log should state that the Licence is valid. You must have a valid license for PHAST set up on your computer in order to be able to enter data and run the calculations. If the Message Log says that you do not have a valid license, you should contact product support using the details given under Product Support in the Help menu. The window will normally open with no Study Folder loaded where a Study Folder is a file that contains the definition of a consequence analysis and you must open or create a Study Folder file before you can perform any modelling work with the program. If you wish, you can change the Installation Preferences under the Options menu so that the program starts by automatically opening a Study Folder (e.g. the Study Folder you worked on most recently).
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction
Inserting a Model You cannot place a Model icon under the Study Folder itself, but only under a Study or Folder. To add a Model at a particular point in the structure, select the Study or Folder, and then select the appropriate Model from the Insert menu as shown. You can also insert a Model by selecting the Model from the Insert cascade at the top of the right-click menu, or by selecting the icon for the Model from the toolbar.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Models are represented by dots on the Map. These dots can sometimes be difficult to see and to relate to the individual Models, but there are several options that can make this easier: Changing the Size and Colour of the Dots Select Map from the Preferences cascade of the Options menu to open the Map Preferences dialog, and then move to the Model tab section. By default the colour is turquoise and the Point Size is 7 pixels, but if you change the colour to blue and the size to 10 pixels as shown, then the dots will be easier to see on the powerstation Map. Displaying the Model Names on the Map If you move to the Models tab section, select any Model, and then select Labels from the View menu, the names of all of the Models will be displayed on the Map. To hide the names, deselect the Labels option. If there is more than one Model at a given location as with the Chlorine Models and the Butadiene Models then the names will be superimposed and may be difficult to read, although this will make it clear that there are multiple Models at the location.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Pinpointing an Individual Model If you select a Model in the Study Tree and then select Pinpoint from the View menu (or press the F4 key), the dot for that Model will become centred in the Map window and will also be highlighted (i.e. displayed in a light turquoise colour). This allows you to locate a specific Model, which is useful if you cannot identify the name for that Model on the Map. You can close the Map Window by selecting Close All from the Window menu.
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Help Window will be displaying a description of the current tab section, but you can use the links inside the topic and the Contents, Index and Search tabs to reach any topic in the Help system and gain a full understanding of the way that the input data will be used in the calculations and the appropriate values that you should set for the hazardous events that you want to model. Most dialogs also have a Whats This Help button in the form of a question mark at the right of the title bar. If you click on this button, the cursor will change to a question mark, showing that you are in Whats This Help mode, and if you then click on a field in the dialog, a popup window will appear over the field, describing the field and giving advice on setting values, as shown. There are some tab sections that appear in the input dialog for more than one Model. For example, the Material tab section is used for both the Vessel/Pipe Source Model, the User-Defined Source Model and the Bleve Blast Model. The Help is written in order to give full guidance for either Model, so there may be references in the Help to features that are not currently relevant to you. After you have finished exploring the input dialog, click on Cancel to close the input dialog without saving any changes you might have made. If you wish, you can move to the other tab sections and explore the input dialogs for other types of data.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Graph Window will usually contain many tab sections, each with a different type of graph. The tab sections included for a particular combination of Model will depend on the type of the Models (e.g. Vessel/Pipe Source Model or Fireball Model), on the type of the materials (toxic or flammable), and on the details of the dispersion and effect behaviour (e.g. whether or not liquid rainout occurs). The Chlorine and Butadiene Models have graphs for cloud concentration, for pool vaporisation, for toxic effects, for jet fire, fireball and flash fire effects, and for explosion effects. The Concentration Graphs The first graph is of centreline concentration. This will be showing the results at the time at which the cloud footprint covers the greatest area, which occurs at a different time for each weather. The graph will initially be showing results only for the four Chlorine Models. In the dispersion calculations, the program uses an averaging time that takes into account changes in wind direction over the course of the release, to give an average concentration at a given location, and it uses different averaging times for toxic and for flammable materials, reflecting the different time-scales that are relevant to each type of release. The concentration graphs always display results calculated with a specific averaging time, which is displayed in the legend for the graph. The default averaging time for this set of results is the Toxic averaging time, and the Butadiene Models were not modelled with that time so have no results to display. To view the concentration results for the Butadiene Models, you must change the selection of averaging time to display. To do this, select Properties from the right-click menu or the Graph menu to open the Plot Properties dialog, and then move to the Averaging Times tab section as shown. If you change to the Flammable Averaging Time, the graph will display the results for the four Butadiene Models only. The User Defined option will also be enabled, which shows that some of the Models have a user-defined averaging time defined in the Location tab section. In fact, all of them have such a time defined, and if you select User Defined as the averaging time for the graphs, the graph will display results for all eight Models. Results Displayed on the Map After the six tab sections that show the results in terms of concentration, the next tab section is the Map graph, which allows you to view different types of effect zones superimposed on the map. When you first move to the Map tab section, the Map graph will be displaying Cloud Footprint results for a concentration of 10,000 ppm for the Toxic averaging time, and the only results displayed will be for the Chlorine Rupture and Chlorine Liquid Leak Models. The other Chlorine Models dont produce this concentration level at the default height of ground level as you can see from the Sideview graph but if you open the Plot Properties dialog, move to the Distance tab and set the Height to 10 m, results for the Chlorine Vapour Leak Model will also appear in the plot.
10
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Footprint concentration results are the default form of results for the Map graph, but the Event field in the Display tab section of the Plot Properties dialog allows you to change to a different form, as shown. The list of types of effect will depend on the types of Models that are covered by the Graph, and will be similar to the range of tab sections in the Graph window. If you select Toxic effects, then the Radiation/Toxic field will become enabled and you can choose between dose, probit and lethality results. If you view the Lethality footprint on the Map, you will see that the Chlorine Liquid Leak gives the greatest downwind effect distance for lethality. The Rupture Model produces higher peak concentrations at any given downwind location, but the short duration of the rupture means that the total dose received is lower than for the leak. The Map graph initially shows the effect zone with a northerly wind, but you can choose Wind Direction from the Graph menu or the right-click menu to change the wind direction. The Pool Vaporisation graph does not show any hazardous effect distances, but the Toxic graph and the various Fire and Explosion graphs all include footprint-results of the form shown on the map, and most of them also include graphs that show the effect-level along the cloud centre-line as a function of distance downwind (e.g. radiation level for a jet fire, or lethality for a toxic release). If you look through the Fire and Explosion graphs, you will see that the greatest downwind effect distance is reached by the Late Explosion Worst Case for the Butadiene Rupture Model, which reaches a distance of about 880 m downwind. A late explosion is one that occurs after the cloud has started dispersing away from the release point, and by default the explosion is assumed to be centred at the cloud front, which means that the explosion radius will reach beyond the flammable region of the cloud. The program calculates the results for such an explosion at regular intervals, and the Worst Case graph displays the results for the ignition-time that gives the greatest downwind effect distance.
11
Chapter 1: Introduction
As with the Graph Window, the Report Window will normally contain several types of results, presented in different tab sections. A given tab section will present the results for all of the weather conditions that have been processed for the Model. For the Butadiene Rupture Model, the first tab section is the Input tab section, which lists the input data. The Audit tab section gives version details for the program, for parameters and materials, but all of the other tab sections give details of the consequence results that you saw summarised in the Graph window: The Summary Report This report summarises the maximum downwind distance to different types of effects, and gives a direct comparison between the different weather conditions. For the Butadiene Rupture, D 5m/s is the weather that gives the greatest distances, although the difference between the three weathers is small.
12
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Discharge Report This gives details of the discharge modelling, and the condition of the release immediately after expansion to atmospheric pressure which is the condition used for the start of the dispersion calculations. This report and all the other results-reports give the results for each weather in turn. The Summary report is the only report which presents a direct comparison between the different weathers. The Dispersion Report This report contains a table which describes the location and state of the cloud at a series of time-steps during the dispersion. You might refer to this report if you wanted to understand a particular aspect of the dispersion behaviour in greater depth. The Commentary Report This report highlights the main events in the course of the dispersion, and allows you to see easily if and when differest types of behaviour occurred, e.g. touch-down on the ground, or the rainout of liquid droplets. The Averaging Times Report The centreline concentrations given in the Dispersion and Commentary reports are all calculated using a core averaging time that is set in the Dispersion Parameters and that has a default value of 18.75 s. The Averaging Times report gives the centreline concentrations at a series of steps during the dispersion, calculated using alternative averaging times. For the Butadiene Rupture these alternative times are the Flammable Averaging Time (whose value is set in the Flammable Parameters) and the User-Defined Averaging Time (whose value is set in the Location tab section for the Model). In this analysis both of these times are also set to 18.75 s so for all the Butadiene Models the Averaging Times report gives the same concentrations as the other reports. However, if you viewed the report for one of the Chlorine Models, you would see results for the Toxic Averaging Time (whose value is set in the Toxic Parameters), and which has the default value of 600 s. The Fireball Report The Fireball report gives radiation results for a fireball resulting from immediate ignition of the released material. The report first gives a description of the fireball flame (emissive power, liftoff height, etc.), then it gives the dimensions of the elliptical effect zones for up to five different radiation levels where the levels are set in the Fireball tab section for the Model and finally gives the radiation levels at a series of points downwind from the centreline of the release. The Jet Fire and Pool Fire reports have a similar form, giving the same three types of results.
13
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Early Explosion Report For Butadiene Rupture, the tab for the Early Explosion report is named Early Expl.(TNT), and this is because the explosion method selected for this Model is the TNT method. There are three methods available, and you select between them in the Flammable tab section for the Model. The TNT method is the simplest, requiring the smallest amount of input data, and it is the default method. The report is similar in form to the Fireball report, giving the dimensions of the circular effect zones for up to five explosion overpressures where the overpressures are set in the Explosion Parameters and also giving the overpressure levels at a series of points downwind from the centreline of the release. The Late Explosion Report This report gives the overpressure effect distances for late explosions occuring at a range of times during the dispersion. For each ignition time, the report gives the location of the cloud-centre, the location of the centre of the explosion, the downwind distance to up to five overpressure levels, and the flammable mass in the cloud at the time of the explosion. By default the centre of the explosion is taken as the cloud front to 50% of the LFL, but you can change this setting in the Explosion Parameters.
The ignition-time that gives the greatest downwind effect distance is the one presented in the Worst Case Late Explosion graph, as described in the section above. The range of reports presented for a particular Model will depend on the type of Model and on the behaviour of a release, and there are additional reports that do not appear for the Butadiene Rupture Model. For example, if the material is toxic then there will be a Toxic report with a table of dose, probit and lethality results as a function of downwind distance, and if the liquid in the release rains out to form a pool, then there will be reports describing the spreading and evaporation of the pool and describing the series of dispersion segments used to represent the vapour produced from the pool. For most of your work with the program you will probably refer mainly to the graphs, since they present the results in the most direct form and allow easy comparison between different Models and Weathers. After you have finished examining the results, you can use Close All from the Window menu to close the windows.
14
Chapter 1: Introduction
Viewing the Results for the Chimney Release and Long Pipeline Models
The other two Vessel/Pipe Source Models in the PHAST Example Study Study Folder illustrate some of the special modelling features that are available. The Chimney Release Model This models a release of methane from a chimney stack on top of a building, and takes into account the effects of the building wake on the dispersion. If you view the graphs for the Model for all three Weathers and then move to the Sideview graph, you will see an outline of the building with the chimney on top, and with the three plumes emerging from the chimney. The building wake produces a zone of low pressure, and this pulls the plumes downwards. The model deals with this by adjusting the height at a specific downwind distance, which is 100 m in this case. In some situations the plume may be pulled down low enough that all or part of the plume is entrained in the building wake, but that has not occurred for any of the weathers for this Model. The Sideview graph shows that the plumes never approach closer to the ground than about 58 m, but if you look at the Explosion graphs and the Flash Fire graph, you will see Worst Case Late Explosion distances of over 900 m, and Flash Fire distances of about 600 m to 50% of the LFL. When performing the modelling of late explosions and flash fires, the program can calculate the flammable footprint of the cloud either at the cloud centreline or at a specific height. The centreline method is selected by default in the Flammable Parameters since this will give the most conservative results, but you should check the Sideview graph and make a judgement about whether or not the effect zone would actually reach the areas of interest for your analysis. A flash fire in a plume 60 m in the air would not affect people on the ground, but an explosion in such a plume might well produce significant overpressures at ground level. The Long Pipeline Model This models the rupture of a 250 m propane pipeline that has a pumped flowrate of 10 kg/s, where the rupture occurs 100 m downstream from the pump. The program performs discharge modelling for the complex, time-dependent flow regime inside the ruptured pipeline and then performs dispersion modelling for a representative averaged discharge rate. Select the Model, and view the graphs for the F 1.5m/s weather. For this analysis the discharge calculations are the same for all weather conditions, so you only need to view one weather if you are only interested in the discharge results. The first tab section in the Graph window will be the Long Pipeline tab. This contains a large number of sub-tabs, each of which shows the behaviour of a particular discharge variable against time. Move to the Flowrate sub-tab, since this shows the behaviour of the most important variable.
15
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Flowrate graph appears to show the flowrate dropping instantly from about 230 kg/s to about 10 kg/s, as shown. However, it is difficult to tell whether or not the drop is instant because the default scale on the time axis goes up to nearly a million seconds. To see the initial behaviour in more detail, you must set the scale yourself. Select Scale and Labels from the right-click menu or the Graph menu to open the Scale dialog, then uncheck the option for Automatic Scaling and set the Maximum Time to 60 s. With the changed scale, you can see that the rate takes about 45 s to drop to a steady rate of 10 kg/s, which is the pump rate. There are five lines plotted on the graph, and their meaning may not be immediately obvious. The two A lines describe the 100 m pipe-section upstream of the rupture, the two B lines describe the 150 m section downstream of the rupture, and the Total line is the sum of the rate released from the two sections. The two Upstream lines show the pumped inflow into the section, which is 10 kg/s for Section A and zero for Section B, and the two Orifice lines show the flow from that section at the point of rupture. If you want to hide any of these lines (e.g. the Upstream lines), open the Plot Property dialog and deselect the lines in the Long Pipe tab section. For the first nine seconds, the orifice flowrates from both sides are almost identical, as the flash-front travels along each section at a similar speed, giving a similar flowregime. However, at 9 s the flash-front reaches the end of section A, and from this point onwards the pressure profile in that section is maintained at the profile produced by a pumped flowrate of 10 kg/s; the program stops the discharge calculations for Section A at this point which means that there are no results available to display on the graph after 9 s, but the 10 kg/s flow from Section A is added in to the Total, as you can see. If you move to the Distance sub-tab, you can see that the flash-front reaches the end of Section B after 14 s. However, the calculations do not stop for Section B at this point, and proceed to model the depressurisation of the section until it has emptied completely at 45 s.
16
Chapter 1: Introduction
If you view the Discharge report for the Model, you will see that the average rate used to represent the behaviour is 10.5 kg/s, taken over a time-scale of one hour. This may underestimate the hazard produced by the release, and there are options available for representing a time-varying release with more than one release segment so that you can investigate the significance of the type of short-term behaviour seen in this release. These options are described in more detail in the next chapter.
17
If you wish, you can omit events, define different events, or change the input values in order to define conditions that are more typical of your facility. However, if you do this you will obtain results that are different from those that will be shown in this manual.
18
19
Selecting a Co-ordinate System for the Map When you click on OK in the Place dialog, a dialog called the Co-ordinate system wizard will open; this is the first step in selecting a co-ordinate system for the analysis. It is only essential to select a system if the Placement Mode is set to Georeferenced or to By Header, or if you want to use a GIS database in the analysis. When you are using the Interactive Placement Mode and will not be connecting to a GIS database which is the situation in this tutorial - you can click on Cancel in the Wizard dialog and leave the co-ordinate system undefined. The Wizard dialog contains a Help button, and this gives you a quick way of viewing an overview of the user and definition of co-ordinate systems in PHAST. Placing the Image in the Map Window When you click on Cancel in the Wizard dialog, there will be brief pause and the Map Window will then open to the right of the Study Tree pane. The cursor will be in the form of crosshairs, and you must drag and drop to place the image in the window. This sets the initial values for the map co-ordinates for the images, which you will set to the correct values in the next step. Setting the Co-ordinates and Size of the Image Double-click on the tutorial icon to open the input dialog for the image, move to the Geometry tab section, and set the values shown. The origin for a map image is the top-left corner, and the values are in the national co-ordinate system for the country. When you click on OK the image will probably disappear from the Map Window because it has moved to a location beyond the scope of the window. Select Fit > All from the Map menu, and the Map Window will change to display the image covered by the image; if the menu bar does not include a Map option, click on the Map Window to make sure it is selected, and the Map menu will appear in the menu bar. Setting a Large Number of Significant Figures for Edit Dialogs The co-ordinate values for the image will be in the national co-ordinate system for the country, and the values for the area covered by the map are six-digit numbers. By default, input dialogs display only four significant figures of any number that you are editing, and with this setting you will find it difficult to be sure that you have entered the co-ordinates. To change the setting for the number of significant figures, select Preferences > General from the Options menu and move to the Miscellaneous tab. The first field in the tab section is the Number of significant figures for edit windows, and you should make sure that this is set to six or more. Click on OK to close the General Preferences dialog and return to the Map tab section. If you open the dialog for the raster image again, you will be able to see that the values that you entered were stored in full.
20
The Location of the Site on the Map For the tutorial, the facility occupies the long, narrow section of land to the north and west of The Village, between the east bank of the river and the road that runs parallel to the river, shown shaded yellow in the illustration.
21
22
The chlorine is held under saturation conditions at atmospheric temperature. The temperature will vary depending on the season and time of day, but for this Model a value of 10oC will be used as representative. To set these Process Conditions, choose Saturated Liquid from the first dropdown list and Temperature from the second dropdown list, and set the Temperature to 10 degC, as shown. When you move the cursor away from the Temperature field the program will calculate the saturation pressure for this temperature and display it in the Pressure field. To define the process conditions for a material that is not held under saturation conditions (e.g. a gas or a padded liquid), you must select both Temperature and Pressure from the lists and give values for both. The Scenario Tab Section You use this tab section to specify the type of hazardous event you want to model. The range of types available will depend on the process conditions you have specified. There is only one Scenario Type available for modelling the rupture of a pressurised vessel; this is Catastrophic Rupture, which is selected by default. The other scenarios are either longer-duration releases, or applicable only to insulated tanks. The vessel is out of doors, so you can leave the Outdoor / In-Building fields with the default selection of Outdoor. If you select In-Building Release, the program will model the build-up of concentration inside the building and the dispersion calculations will start with the state of the plume as it is released from the ventilation system. The other fields in the tab section are not relevant to a rupture scenario. You can take the default settings for all of the fields in this tab section. The Pipe Tab Section All of the fields in this tab section are disabled when the scenario is set to Rupture. They are relevant only to the Line Rupture, Disc Rupture, Relief Valve and Long Pipeline scenarios, as you will see later. The Vessel Tab Section All of the fields in this tab section are disabled when the scenario is set to Rupture. For all of the other scenarios, some of the fields in the tab section will be enabled, with the combination depending on the scenario as you will see later.
23
The Location Tab Section First, set the release coordinates. The Elevation has a default value of 1 m, taken from the System Parameters, but you should set this to 7.37 m, which is the elevation of the centre of the sphere above the ground. Set the East co-ordinate to 198492 m, and the North co-ordinate to 435063 m. The program requires a criterion for stopping the dispersion calculations: either a maximum distance, or a minimum concentration. For this tutorial, set the Concentration of interest to 100 ppm. When you set this concentration, the Uses averaging time field below the concentration will acquire a red border, showing that it is mandatory; you must specify the averaging time to be used in the calculations for stopping the dispersion. For a toxic release, the list allows you to choose the Toxic averaging time or the times associated with the ERPG, IDLH or STEL measures of toxicity, or to specify a User-defined time. For this release, select the Toxic averaging time, which is set in the Toxic Parameters and has a default value of 600 s. The Location tab section allows you to select additional averaging times for which you want concentration values. If you make any selections in the final section of the tab, the results will be appear in the Averaging Times report, as you saw in the previous chapter. The Bund Data Tab Section If there is a bund around the vessel and you want to take this into account in the modelling of pool-spreading and evaporation, you can check the Bund exists box and enter a description of the bund. For this sphere there is no bund, so you can leave the tab section with the default values. The Indoor/Outdoor Tab Section All of the fields in this tab section are disabled then the scenario is a catastrophic rupture outdoors. Some of the fields are enabled for the longer-duration scenarios as you will see later, while others are enabled for in-building releases. Flammable Tab Section The fields in this tab section are disabled when the material is toxic only. For a flammable release, they allow you to choose between the three models for a vapour cloud explosion, and to choose between two models for jet fires. The Toxic Parameters Tab Section The fields in this tab section are used in modelling the buildup of toxic concentration inside a building, and the exposure of a person inside the building. By default, these calculations are set to Unselected (i.e. they will not be performed), but for this tutorial you should change them to Selected. The calculations require information about the ventilation-rate for the building and about how long people remain in the building after the cloud has passed and the concentration is lower outdoors than indoors. By default these values will be taken from the Toxic parameters tab section for the Model, but if you choose Wind Speed Dependent for the Ventilation Specification, then the values will be taken from the data for the Weather, which means that the values may be different for each weather.
24
For this tutorial, leave the Ventilation Specification with the default value of Case Specified, and take the default values for the Building exchange rate and the Tail time. The TNT, Multi Energy and Baker Strehlow Tab Sections The fields in these tab section are disabled when the material is toxic only. They are used in the modelling of a vapour cloud explosion. The Discharge Parameters Tab Section The fields in this tab section are always enabled, and take their default values from the System Parameters. They are used in the discharge modelling for the Line Rupture, Disc Rupture and Relief Valve scenarios, so are not relevant to this Model. The Jet Fire, Pool Fire and Fireball Tab Sections For a flammable release, these tab sections allow you to choose between options for modelling each type of flame. A Summary of the Input Data The input process involves examining a large number of input fields, but the number of values that you have to enter in order to complete the data for this Model is small, as shown in the table below:
Tab Section Material Input Field Discharge Material Inventory Process Conditions Elevation East Co-ordinate North Co-ordinate Concentration of interest Uses averaging time Indoor Toxic Calculations Value Chlorine 102 m3 Saturated Liquid at 10oC. 7.37 m 198492 m 435063 m 100 ppm Toxic Selected
Location
Toxic parameters
The default scenario for a Vessel/Pipe Source Model is a catastrophic rupture out of doors, so there is no need to change any settings in the Scenario tab section for this particular Model. If you have made all of these settings, the input data for the Model are now complete, and you can click on OK to close the dialog. You should see that the icon no longer has a red border, showing that it has a full set of input data.
25
26
Pipe Tab Section The Pipe Length is the length of pipework between the vessel and the point of rupture, and you should set it to 9 m as shown. To set the Internal Diameter to one inch, click on mm to the right of the field, and then select in from the list of units that appears as shown. You can then enter the diameter directly in inches, rather than having to perform the conversion yourself into the default unit of mm. Leave the pipe roughness with the default value taken from the System Parameters. The number of valves is used in the modelling of frictional losses, and you can leave them as zero. The other fields in the tab section are relevant only to the long pipeline scenario, and are all disabled for the line rupture scenario. Vessel Tab Section For the line rupture scenario and most of the other scenarios that involve a continuous release, the Time Varying Release option will be enabled in the Vessel tab section. If you do not check this option, then the release will be modelled with the initial release rate, and the duration will be the time required to drain the inventory at this initial rate. This will normally give conservative results in the consequence calculations. If you select the time-varying option, then you must supply information about the dimensions of the vessel. The discharge calculations will model the effect of the release on conditions in the vessel and the way that these conditions and the release rate change over time, and will represent these time-varying results either with a single rate (e.g. an average rate, or a rate at a particular time) or with a series of rates, depending on your selection for the Rates versus time. For this release, you will perform an initial run of the discharge calculations with the time-varying modelling selected, then examine the results and decide on the most appropriate way to represent the behaviour for the rest of the consequence analysis.
27
Set the Liquid Head to 4.6 m, select the Time Varying Release option, set the Tank Type to Spherical, the Height of Discharge to zero, and the Diameter to 6.74 m. Leave the Rates versus time set to the default selection of Average rate with an averaging time of 3600 s; you can return to make a final selection after you have viewed the discharge results. Location Tab Section Set the Elevation to 0.1 m. With this setting, the liquid droplets will probably not evaporate inside the cloud, and will probably rain out and form a vaporising pool. Leave the other fields with the same values as for the rupture. In reality, the releaselocation would be offset by a few metres from the centre of the sphere but this difference is insignificant compared with the effect distances for chlorine and can be ignored Bund Data Tab Section Leave this unchanged, with no bund specified. Indoor/Outdoor Tab Section For a continuous release scenario such as line rupture you must specify the Direction of the release. Choose Horizontal from the list, which is the correct setting for this type of unobstructed rupture of horizontal pipework. The list of directions includes a second horizontal option: Horizontal Impingement. You should select this option if the release is in a congested area and the release is likely to impinge on a wall or other equipment; the program will reduce the momentum of the release, which will reduce the amount of air mixed into the jet during the initial stages. Discharge Parameters There is one bend in the 9 m of pipework, so you can set the Frequency of Bends to 0.11 per m. This completes the input data for this stage, and you can click on OK to close the input dialog.
28
The program will show a list of the weather conditions for which you performed the discharge calculations and for which it has results, and when you select one of these weathers the program will create a User-Defined Source Model with the name Calculated Discharge, as shown. The User-Defined Source Model has many of the same tab sections as the Vessel/Pipe Model, but instead of the Scenario and Vessel tab sections it has a Discharge tab section in which you specify the discharge rate and conditions directly, since the UserDefined Source Model does not perform any discharge modelling itself. The Calculated Discharge Model will be created with Discharge data taken from the averaged results from the Liquid Pipework Model, but you can edit these values if you choose. 2: Edit the Model and Deselect Time-Varying Release This is the simplest method for bypassing the time-varying discharge modelling if you decide that you want to use the initial rate to represent the entire release, and this is the method that will be used for this tutorial. The discharge calculations for this Model will run much more quickly with the time-varying option turned off. After this adjustment, the final set of input data for this Model can be summarised as follows, not including the values that are the same as those for the rupture model:
Tab Section Scenario Pipe Vessel Location Discharge Parameters Input Field Scenario Type Phase Released Pipe Length Internal Diameter Time-Varying Release? Tank Head Elevation Frequency of Bends Value Line Rupture Liquid 9m 1 inch Not selected 4.6 m 0.1 m 0.11 per m
The default direction for a line rupture scenario is Horizontal, so there is no need to change any settings in the Indoor/Outdoor tab section for this particular Model.
29
When the phase is set to Vapour in the Scenario tab section, the Building Wake Effect fields will become enabled. The sphere is in an open area so building-wake effects are not relevant to this release, and you can leave these options unchecked. The release rate from the two-inch vapour line is similar to that from the one-inch liquid line, and the two pipework releases give very similar effect distances.
30
Changing the Location and Concentration of Interest When you move to the Location tab section, you will see that the Toxic averaging time is no longer set for Uses averaging time and that this field is now shown as unset and mandatory. The material is flammable only so the Toxic averaging time is not included in the list, and the program is prompting you to make a different selection for the calculations of the stopping-concentration. For a flammable release you would not want to calculate the concentration to a value as low as 100 ppm, since the cloud will not pose a hazard once it has diluted below the lower flammable limit of 2% or 20,000 ppm. You could set this concentration yourself, but for a flammable release you can also leave the Concentration of interest blank, as shown, and the program will automatically stop the dispersion calculations once the concentration has reached a given fraction of the LFL as calculated with the Flammable averaging time. By default the fraction is 50%, but you can change this in the Flammable Parameters if you prefer. For this tutorial, delete the value for the Concentration of interest, and set the East and North coordinates as shown above. You must make this change for each of the three Models.
31
If you move to the Models tab of the Study Tree and look at the Jet Fire, Pool Fire or Fireball tab sections for any of the flammable Models, you will see that the lethality calculations are now selected, with the five levels set.
32
Explosion Graphs The two Early Explosion graphs contain results only for the Rupture, since immediate explosions are assumed not to occur for continuous releases. However, the Late Explosion graphs contain results for all three Models. The Late Explosion Worst Case graph shows the effect radii for the explosion-time which gives the greatest downwind distance for the lowest overpressure set in the Explosion Parameters (0.02 bar), and the legend for the Late Explosion Time graph gives the time at which the worst-case explosion occurs. The greatest downwind effect distances is 1,100 m, for the Rupture, and it occurs at 11.2 s. Flash Fire Graph The Flash Fire Graph shows the zone for the cloud at the time that it covers the maximum area. For the rupture, this gives a maximum downwind effect distance of 350 m to 10,000 ppm, whereas for the two pipework releases this gives a distance of about 70 m to the same concentration. 10,000 ppm is 50% of the LFL, which is the fraction set by default in the Flammable Parameters as the boundary of the flash fire effect zone.
33
By default there are no confined regions selected, which means that there are no mandatory fields in the tab section and that the Model will run even if you do not set any values in the tab section but it also means that by default the Model will not produce any explosion results. For this tutorial you will define three regions of confinement, each occupying 30% of the volume of the cloud, and with a range of confinement strengths between 6 and 8, as shown. Values of 8 and 9 are typically used for process units, but the region around the propane sphere is relatively open. The strength of an explosion in the unconfined region of the cloud will be 2, as shown. Click on OK to close the dialog for the Multi-Energy Model. Setting the Inputs for the Baker-Strehlow Explosion Method Open the input dialog for the Baker Strehlow Model, move to the Flammable tab section, and choose Baker Strehlow as the Explosion Method. Next, move to the Baker-Stehlow tab section. This tab section contains many mandatory fields, and you must complete this tab section before you can run the Model. For this tutorial, use the option to have the program calculate the speed of the flame (rather than supplying it yourself). For a propane release you should set the Material Reactivity to Medium, and for this release you should set the number of dimensions for the Flame Expansion to 2, and the Obstacle Density to Medium, as shown. The release is relatively close to the ground and there is likely to be some reflection of the pressure-waves off the ground, so you should set the Ground Reflection Factor to 1.6. Finally, the volume of the cloud assumed to be involved in the explosion is 500 m3. Click on OK to close the dialog for the Baker-Strehlow Model. Running the Calculations and Viewing the Results Select the Rupture folder, run the calculations, and then view the graphs for the 1.5/F Weather. In the Early Explosion Distance graph, the Baker-Strehlow Model has the highest peak overpressure, of about 1.02 barg, but the pressure declines rapidly with distance and there are no effects beyond about 300 m. The TNT Model produces a peak pressure of 1 barg and the pressure declines less rapidly with distance, so the pressure at 300 m is 0.2 barg, and there are effects out to 1,400 m. For the Multi-Energy Model, the graph shows results only for the unconfined region of the cloud, for which the peak overpressure is only about 0.02 barg.
34
However, in the Early Explosion Radii graph the results shown for the Multi-Energy Model are those for the worst case, and in this comparison the Multi-Energy Model gives the greatest effect distances of the three Models, with a distance of about 2 km to 0.02 barg. If you view the graphs for the Multi-Energy Model on its own and select only the 1.5/F Weather, you will be able to see separate Early Explosion Distance results for each of the regions in the cloud. These results show that the over-pressure levels close to the release are very strongly dependent on the value that you set for the strength of confinement. This analysis shows that, for this release, the default TNT method gives results that are close to the multi-energy results with a medium strength of confinement (i.e. with a strength of 7). It seems reasonable and simplest - to take the default method as representative for this analysis.
35
For a release from the body of a vessel rather than from attached pipework, you should set the Scenario Type to Leak. This will give a larger discharge rate since there are no frictional losses during the flow to the leak-location. For the leak scenario, you specify the leak-size in the Scenario tab section. The leak is assumed to be at the bottom of the tank, which is the most conservative assumption for the tank head and the duration.
The Burst Pressure is 60% greater than the normal operating pressure and is used in calculating the surface emissive power of the fireball. The Fireball Shape tab section gives you the choice between using a correlation to obtain the radius, duration and emissive power, or entering your own values. For this Model, you are using the correlation. The dialog also contains a Contour Data tab section that allows you to define a plane and up to three radiation levels for which you want contour results.
36
What Next?
This tutorial has not covered every feature of the program, but you should now have enough of an understanding of the approach and methods used in the program to be able to explore the remaining features yourself, with the assistance of the online Help. If you need further details on any aspect of the program, or if you need guidance on how to model a particular situation for your facility, you should contact product support using the details given under Product Support in the Help menu.
37