Liquid Hydrogen Release

Assistant Researcher :
Hamed Aghajani
 
 
 
Supervisors:
Prof. Jennifer Wen
Dr. Baopeng Xu
 Literature Review-Experimental/Numerical
A.D. Little Inc., Lockheed California Co & the US Federal Bureau of Mines [1960]
NASA, Witcofski and Chirivella [1984]/ CHAMPAGNE code
Euro-Quebec Hydro-Hydrogen Pilot Project [1994] / CFD pre-test calculations were performed
using the Batelle code BASSIM & Post-test CFD dispersion calculations were performed using
the FLUENT and the ADREA-HF
Verfondern and Dienhart [1997]/ computer model LAUV on the basis of the shallow-layer equations
INSTITUT NATIONAL DE L’ENVIRONNEMENT INDUSTRIEL ET DES RISQUES [2001]/ Cryogenic
Helium Spill Experiments
WE-NET project [2002]
 Literature Review-Experimental
Nakamichi et al. [1]

Images of the spray issuing from 2mm nozzle with driving pressure of
0.2 MPa. Imagesof (a) subcooled condition (b) saturated conditions
View of the Liquid Hydrogen spray from the observation window

Images of the spray acquired by CCD camera Image of (a) injected spray (b) middle stream (c) end of the evaporation process

1 K. Nakamichi, Y. Kihara, T. Okamura, “Observation of liquid hydrogen jet on flashing and evaporation characteristics”, Cryogenics, vol. 48, pp.26–30, 2008.
 Flashing: The Phenomenon of Interest
Liquid’s sudden pressure drop below its saturation pressure

All the heat cannot be contained in the liquid as sensible heat

Heat surplus is transformed into latent heat of vaporization.

The most energizing molecules of liquid are extracted and reach a vapor state

leading to the instantaneous cooling of the remaining liquid

reaches a state of thermodynamic equilibrium

This is at the origin of the formation of vapor bubbles inside the liquid bulk
 CFD Tool-OpenFOAM
Open-source code available at www.openfoam.com.

Object-oriented code written in C++

Continuously under development

Includes polyhedral mesh support, making it possible to create meshes using any form of cells, as
long as the quality of the resulting mesh is high

Models are implemented to be run-time-selectable, which makes it easy for the user to switch
between turbulence models, numerical schemes etc.

The complete parallelization of the code. All solvers written in OpenFOAM can easily be run in
parallel, since the code is parallelized at such a fundamental level, removing the need (in most
cases) for the user to consider multiple processor simulations.
OpenFOAM: Multi-phase Solvers
 Developments (continued)
Numerical simulation of liquid hydrogen jet break-up in air and its evaporation composes of three
fluids (liquid hydrogen, gaseous hydrogen and Air) involves at least five coupled tasks:

(1) resolving the flow field (Navier–Stokes equations + effect of the sub-grid scale atomizing
flow field by LES )

(2) updating the position of the interface (using the VOF method, in which the liquid phase is
allowed to evaporate and the gas phase can be compressed due to pressure shocks)

(3) resolving the cryogenic thermal field (solving the energy equation taking into account the
effect of the combined gas and liquid- phases of the thermal field)

(4) calculating the flash fraction

(5) separation of evaporated hydrogen from Air.

 Developments (continued)
• The most important feature of flashing liquids seems to be non-equilibrium vapor
generating process as the pressure drops.
• The non-equilibrium vaporization process is controlled by internal bubble nucleation,
growth/collapse, and motion
• Models with different degrees of fidelity
Frozen flow model
Homogeneous equilibrium model (HEM)
velocity slip models
Homogeneous relaxation model (HRM)

Upstream pressures below 10 bar Upstream pressures above 10 bar

1 Z. Bilick and J. Kestin, “Physical aspects of the relaxation model in two-phase flow”, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A, 428, 379-397, 1990.
2 P. Downar-Zapolski, Z. Blicki, L.Bolle and J. Franco “The non equilibrium relaxation model for one-dimensional flashing liquid flow”, Int. J. Multiphase Flow Vol.22,
No.3, pp.473-483, 1996.
 Developments
The equilibrium quality is a function of the enthalpy and the saturation enthalpies at the local pressure

The quality, the mass fraction of vapor, is calculated from each cell’s void fraction, for densities falling
inside the saturation dome
1

8 Subtraction of 3 from 6; assuming near isenthalpic phase change

9
 Simulation
Turbulent and subsonic flow and in atomization regime;
Surface tension and Viscous forces are likely to important
t=0.0001
Domain size: 102mm 10mm
t=0.0002 Number of hexahedral: 102200
Grid size: 50-100 Micron
t=0.0003 Equations solved:
1
t=0.0004

2
t=0.0005

t=0.0006 3

t=0.0007

t=0.0008

4
t=0.0009

t=0.0010
Thanks for your attention

Questions?