A Numerical Study on Jet Release from Off-site and Mobile Hydrogen Refueling Station for Separation Distance

High-pressure hydrogen facilities are prone to jet release accidents. In the cases of immediate ignition, jet fire occurs, and delayed ignition can lead to explosion accidents. Therefore, its management is crucial to avoid leakage. In this study, the change in volume fraction of hydrogen and the flammable area around the hydrogen facility were calculated using a computational fluid dynamics model, for the cases of jet release accident in a hydrogen storage tank of off-site hydrogen refueling station and a mobile hydrogen refueling station. The leakage at the off-site hydrogen refueling station was through the opening at the top of the wall. The mobile hydrogen refueling station had hydrogen stagnated in the lower part of the wing body due to the wing body. Most of the hydrogen facilities were included in the hydrogen flammable zone after 10 s of the jet release. Further, after 30 s, the flammable distance was calculated to be approximately twice for of a mobile hydrogen refueling station as compared to a storage type hydrogen refueling station.

A Numerical Simulation on the Leakage Event of a High-Pressure Hydrogen Dispenser

For the sake of the increasing demand of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, there are more concerns on the safety of hydrogen refueling stations. As one of the key pieces of equipment, the hydrogen dispenser has drawn attention on this aspect since it involves massive manual operations and may be bothered by a high probability of failure. In this paper, a numerical study is conducted to simulate the possible leakage events of the hydrogen dispenser based on a prototype in China whose working pressure is 70 MPa. The leakage accident is analyzed with respect to leakage sizes, leak directions, and the time to stop the leakage. It is found that, due to the large mass flow rate under such high pressure, the leak direction and the layout of the components inside the dispenser become insignificant, and the ignitable clouds will form inside the dispenser in less than 1 s if there is a leakage of 1% size of the main tube. The ignitable clouds will form near the vent holes outside the dispenser, which may dissipate quickly if the leakage is stopped. On the other hand, the gas inside the dispenser will remain ignitable for a long time, which asks for a design with no possible ignition source inside. The results can be useful in optimizing the design of the dispenser, regarding the reaction time and sensitivity requirements of the leakage detector, the size and amount of vent holes, etc.

Research on High-Pressure Hydrogen Pre-Cooling Based on CFD Technology in Fast Filling Process

In the fast filling process, in order to control the temperature of the vehicle-mounted storage tank not to exceed the upper limit of 85 °C, it is an effective method to add a hydrogen pre-cooling system upstream of the hydrogenation machine. In this paper, Fluent is used to simulate the heat transfer process of high-pressure hydrogen in a shell-and-tube heat exchanger and the phase change process of refrigerant R23. The accuracy of the model is proven by a comparison with the data in the references. Using this model, the temperature field and gas volume fraction in the heat transfer process are obtained, which is helpful to analyze the heat transfer mechanism. At the same time, the influence of hydrogen inlet temperature, hydrogen inlet pressure, and refrigerant flow rate on the refrigeration performance was studied. The current work shows that the model can be used to determine the best working parameters in the pre-cooling process and reduce the operating cost of the hydrogen refueling station.

Effect of Hydrogen Gas Pressure on Calcium–Aluminum-rich Inclusion Formation in the Protosolar Disk: a Laboratory Simulation of Open-system Melt Crystallization

Calcium–aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) are the oldest materials that formed in the protosolar disk. Igneous CAIs experienced melting and subsequent crystallization in the disk during which the evaporation of relatively volatile elements such as Mg and Si occurred. Evaporation from the melt would have played a significant role in the variation of chemical, mineralogical, and petrologic characteristics of the igneous CAIs. In this study, we investigated crystallization of CAI analog melt under disk-like low-pressure hydrogen (P H2) conditions of 0.1, 1, and 10 Pa to constrain the pressure condition of the early solar system in which type B CAIs were formed. At P H2 = 10 Pa, the samples were mantled by melilite crystals, as observed for type B1 CAIs. However, the samples heated at P H2 = 0.1 Pa exhibited random distribution of melilite, as in type B2 CAIs. At the intermediate P H2 of 1 Pa, type-B1-like structure formed when the cooling rate was 5°C hr−1, whereas the formation of type-B2-like structure required a cooling rate faster than 20°C hr−1. The compositional characteristics of melilite in type B1 and B2 CAIs could also be reproduced by experiments. The results of the present study suggest that P H2 required for type-B1-like textural and chemical characteristics is greater than 1 Pa. The hydrogen pressure estimated in this study would impose an important constraint on the physical condition of the protosolar disk where type B CAIs were formed.