Study on Liquid Hydrogen Leakage and Diffusion Behavior in a Hydrogen Production Station

Abstract

Liquid hydrogen storage is an important way of hydrogen storage and transportation, which greatly improves the storage and transportation efficiency due to the high energy density but at the same time brings new safety hazards. In this study, the liquid hydrogen leakage in the storage area of a hydrogen production station is numerically simulated. The effects of ambient wind direction, wind speed, leakage mass flow rate, and the mass fraction of gas phase at the leakage port on the diffusion behavior of the liquid hydrogen leakage were investigated. The results show that the ambient wind direction directly determines the direction of liquid hydrogen leakage diffusion. The wind speed significantly affects the diffusion distance. When the wind speed is 6 m/s, the diffusion distance of the flammable hydrogen cloud reaches 40.08 m, which is 2.63 times that under windless conditions. The liquid hydrogen leakage mass flow rate and the mass fraction of the gas phase have a greater effect on the volume of the flammable hydrogen cloud. As the leakage mass flow rate increased from 5.15 kg/s to 10 kg/s, the flammable hydrogen cloud volume increased from 5734.31 m3 to 10,305.5 m3. The installation of a barrier wall in front of the leakage port can limit the horizontal diffusion of the flammable hydrogen cloud, elevate the diffusion height, and effectively reduce the volume of the flammable hydrogen cloud. This study can provide theoretical support for the construction and operation of hydrogen production stations.

Keywords

• hydrogen safety
• liquid hydrogen
• leakage and diffusion
• flammable cloud
• computational fluid dynamics