Heavy Gas Dispersion Experiments

Experiments by K Marotzke and M Schatzmann

Introduction

Heavy gas release experiments were performed in the wind tunnel. The situations studied include: open flat terrain, sloping terrain, and various kinds of obstacles. The results of these experiments form part of the Rediphem data base, which is publicly available.

The Rediphem data base at Risø Laboratories in Denmark contains descriptions and results of a number of heavy gas dispersion experiments in the field and in wind tunnels. Rediphem is particularly suited to storing long time series of measurements in a fairly optimally compact binary form. The Rediphem browser allows these to be plotted and exported to spreadsheets.

The heavy gas experiments

The contribution of Hamburg University Meteorological Institute to the Rediphem data base is a series of wind tunnel experiments on heavy gas releases, in open flat terrain and on slopes, and with various obstacles to the flow. For most of the geometries illustrated, both steady continuous and instantaneous releases were studied. Here we simply give a summary of the scenarios studied:

The obstacle geometries are shown here

The results are in the Rediphem data base.

About the Rediphem data base

These results of these experiments have been incorporated into the VDI (German Engineering Society) guidelines on safety (see reference).

References

Further information is available in:

"A Collection of Data from Dense Gas Experiments", Morten Nielsen and Søren Ott, Risø Laboratory Report: Risø-R-845(EN) , December 1995, ISBN 87-550-2113-1 (Availability.)
"Untersuchung von Hindernisstrukturen bei der Störfallausbreitung", K Marotzke and M Schatzmann, 1993 (Umweltforschungsplan des Bundesministers für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit; Luftreinhaltung Forschungsbericht 104 09 110) (Available in German from M.Schatzmann at the University of Hamburg Meteorological Institute.)
"Ausbreitung von störfallbedingten Freisetzungen schwerer Gase - Sicherheitsanalyse" VDI 3783 Blatt 2 (1990). "Dispersion of Heavy Gas Emissions by Accidental Releases - Safety Study" VDI 3783 Part 2 (1990). (Bilingual German/English report.)