Modelling liquid hydrogen release and spread on water

Consequence modelling of high potential risks of usage and transportation of cryogenic liquids yet requires substantial improvements. Among the cryogenics, liquid hydrogen (LH2) needs especial treatments and a comprehensive understanding of spill and spread of liquid and dispersion of vapor. Even though many of recent works have shed lights on various incidents such as spread, dispersion and explosion of the liquid over land, less focus was given on spill and spread of LH2 onto water. The growing trend in ship transportation has enhanced risks such as ships’ accidental releases and terrorist attacks, which may ultimately lead to the release of the cryogenic liquid onto water. The main goal of the current study is to present a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) approach using OpenFOAM to model release and spread of LH2 over water substrate, and discuss previous approaches. It also includes empirical heat transfer equations due to boiling, and computation of evaporation rate through an energy balance. The results of the proposed model will be potentially used within another coupled model that predicts gas dispersion [1]. This work presents a good practice approach to treat pool dynamics and appropriate correlations to identify heat flux from different sources. Furthermore, some of the previous numerical approaches to redistribute, or in some extend, manipulate the LH2 pool dynamic are brought up for discussion, and their pros and cons are explained. In the end, the proposed model is validated by modelling LH2 spill experiment carried out in 1994 at the Research Centre Juelich in Germany [2,3].