CFD Simulation of Methane Combustion for Estimation of Fire and Explosion in Offshore Plant

Because of the recent increase in maritime cargo capacity, the production and price of crude oil have been rising. As oil prices have risen, many problems have occurred in the industry. To solve these problems, marine resources are being actively developed, and there has been an increase in the orders for special vessels and marine structures for the development of marine resources. However, consequently, various kinds of accidents have also occurred in these special vessels and structures. One of the major types of accidents involves fire and explosion, which cause many casualties and property damage. Therefore, various studies to estimate and prevent such accidents have been carried out. In this study, as basic research for the prevention of fire and explosion, numerical simulations on combustion were carried out by using a commercial grid generation program, Gridgen, and a CFD program, ANSYS -CFX. The influences of some parameters, such as the grid system, turbulence model, turbulent dissipation rate, and so on, on the simulation results were investigated, and optimum ones were chosen. It was found that the present results adopting these parameters agreed moderately well with other experimental and numerical ones.