FIRST ROMANIAN COMPUTATIONAL SIMULATION OF AIR-METHANE MIXTURE EXPLOSION

References: 17th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference SGEM 2017, www.sgem.org, SGEM2017 Conference Proceedings, ISBN 978-619-7105-00-1 / ISSN 1314-2704, 29 June - 5 July, 2017, Vol. 17, Issue 13, 335-342 pp, DOI: 10.5593/sgem2017/13/S03.043

ABSTRACT

Regarding the mining industry, the risk of an explosive atmosphere occurrence and the consequences differ from one mine to another, depending on the configuration of the mine and on the type of the coal extracted. Although preventive measures are taken, the potential risk of explosion cannot be excluded from firedamp mines, but only reduced as much as possible. Therefore, where the possibility of forming these explosive atmospheres exists, the explosion risk assessment is required by developing scenarios that considers the existence, in the same location and at the same time, of the source of ignition, the combustible gas and the oxygen. In this regard, CFD techniques can be very useful tools for risk assessors.
Due to the large field of natural gas consumers, the benefits resulted from the development of the virtual simulation models of gas explosions are found not only in the security state of the staff of coal underground mining. It can beneficially effect an area much wider, from big industries to small consumer appliances, from urban center activities to environmental protection.
In the field of computational modeling of gas explosion, the global concerns in this area are very low. So far, in Romania there are no known works in virtual simulations of gas explosion, this domain being totally uncovered. This paper presents the first Romanian success of this kind, respectively the computational simulation of a stoichiometric air-methane mixture explosion in a closed, equipped with obstacles space. This could be achieved by changing the parameters and indices inside the models of ANSYS FLUENT application, customizing these data for gas explosion specific domain. The results are presented in form of spatial charts of the flame front development and by graphics that represent the time evolution of characteristic parameters.

Keywords: methane explosion, computational simulation, explosion simulation, air-methane mixture