Development of Boiling Liquid ExpandingVapor Explosion (BLEVE) Model for Process Plant Design

• Main Author: Abdul, Mohamad Irwan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2005
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/7622/1/2005%20-%20Development%20of%20Boiling%20Liquid%20ExpandingVapor%20Explosion%20%28BLEVE%29%20Model%20for%20Process%20Plant%20Des.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/7622/

Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion (BLEVE) was dangerous and can cause humongous loss for the process plant. Reid (1976) defined BLEVEs as the sudden loss of containment of a liquid that is at a superheated temperature for atmospheric conditions. There are a lot of commercialized tools in estimating the effects of BLEVE but very complicated and not user friendly. Development of model from Microsoft Excel in estimating the BLEVE effects was a main objective inthis project. In this project, a process in MLNG Malaysia was utilized as one of the case study. Stabilizer C-2502 was utilized as case study in this project. The feed to Stabilizer- 2502, consist of the bottom form the Demethanizer and any propane, which is being re-processed from the liquefaction unit. In this project, HYSYS simulator acted as "live" thermodynamic database to beextracted to Microsoft Excel for effect estimation. The first effect is overpressure or blast effect. In this case study the maximum overpressure due to distance is 0.87 psi which the damage is partial demolition of houses. The second effect is thermal radiation. The result that obtained is in term radiation dose. The maximum radiation dose is 721.171 kJ/m2. Thiswill cause third -degree burns (99%fatal). In this Final Year Project, the result from this BLEVE model is compared to the result from SAFETI Software. The SAFETI Software has being established for many years and well known in the process industries. This is to validate the result the obtained from BLEVE model. The main objectives were accomplished. The desired data from HYSYS is extracted toME interface to performs the calculation and effect estimation. Further development of this project is commercially advisable.