Numerical Simulation of Leaking Hydrogen Dispersion Behavior

As one kind of clean, zero carbon and sustainable energy, hydrogen energy has been regarded as the most potential secondary energy. Recently, hydrogen refueling station gradually becomes one of important distribution infrastructures that provides hydrogen sources for transport vehicles and other distribution devices. However, the highly combustible nature of hydrogen may bring great hazards to environment and human. The safety design of hydrogen usage has been brought to public too. This paper is mainly focused on the hydrogen leakage and dispersion process. A new solver for gaseous buoyancy dispersion process is developed based on OpenFOAM [1]. Thermodynamic and transport properties of gases are updated by library Mutation ++ [2]. For validation, two tests of hydrogen dispersion in partially opened space and closed space are presented. Numerical simulation of hydrogen dispersion behavior in hydrogen refueling station is carried out in this paper as well. From the results, three phases of injection, dispersion and buoyancy can be seen clearly. The profile of hydrogen concentration is tend to be Gaussian in dispersion region. Subsonic H2 jet in stagnant environment is calculated for refueling station, the relationship between H2 concentration decay and velocity along the jet trajectory is obtained.