Acoustic analysis of blast waves produced by rapid phase transition of LNG

Massive offshore and onshore storage of fuel have led the international community to raise questions about the hazards on the surrounding installations and people. Among the possible accidental scenarios when cryogenic gas as liquefied natural gas (LNG) is spilled on water at a very fast rate, the phenomenon of rapid phase transition (RPT) may occur: large amounts of energy are released during phase transition which can generate explosions. The related consequences should be added to the possible consequences of fire in terms of flash fire, fireball, pool fire, and vapour cloud explosion for confined and congested geometry surrounding the release point. In this paper, the analysis of RPT of LNG has been studied from the point of view of blast wave production, through ab initio acoustic analysis for monopole source. Maximum overpressures, as calculated at the source point and along the blast pathway are compared with results of large scale experiments. Safety distances are given for the sake of comparison with threshold distances reported in the open literature.