Numerical Simulation of Thermal Radiation of Tank Fire and Fire Prevention Assessment in Oil Pipeline Station

Tank fire is one of the most frequent accidents in oil pipeline transportation station. The hazard of the tank fire to people, building, process piping, and other equipment, is mainly from thermal radiation. It is necessary and meaningful to study the distribution of thermal radiation of tank fire for emergency response, preventing and reducing lost.

To research tank fire in pipeline station, computer fluid dynamics (CFD) technology, a useful tool, is introduced to carry out the numerical simulations of oil tank fire and cofferdam pool fire. First, the fire heat release rate and increase rate of gasoline and diesel oil are set by combustion properties of the two materials. According to the types of tanks, three kinds of fires, including rotundity fire and cirque fire on the top of a tank, pool fire in the cofferdam, are simulated. The different fire scenarios are set to build a three-dimensional model in the CFD software package and used to research the thermal radiation spatial distribution under different environmental conditions.

By the results of simulation, the effects of the thermal radiation to the buildings, process piping, people and other facilities are analyzed, and the hazard of the fire to the oil pipeline station is evaluated. It shows that the huge thermal radiation from tank top fire can lead to the deformation of nearby tanks and facilities. In addition, excursion of the flame of pool fire, caused by wind, is taken into account, and it is found that excursion is little because the buoyancy of the fire is more powerful to the wind. Also, the effect of cooling water equipment, set on the top of the tank, is simulated to work on the fire to demonstrate the function and the result indicates the radiation heat flux of the tank wall decreases greatly and the nearby tanks are protected effectively because of the cooling water.

On basis of simulation, the evaluation can tell that how long safety distance is, how to response to a tank fire, how the performance of fire control system is like.