CFD Modelling of Large Scale Liquid Hydrogen Experiments Indoors and Outdoors

The use of liquid hydrogen in maritime applications is expected to grow in the coming years, in order to meet the decarbonisation goals that EU countries and countries worldwide have set for 2050. In this context, The Norwegian Public Roads Administration commissioned large-scale LH2 dispersion and explosion experiments both indoors and outdoors, which were conducted by DNG GL in 2019 to better understand safety aspects of LH2 in the maritime sector. In this work, the DNV unignited outdoor and indoor tests have been simulated and compared with the experiments with the aim to validate the ADREA-HF Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code in maritime applications. Three tests, two outdoors and one indoors, were chosen for the validation. The outdoor tests (test 5 and 6) involved liquid hydrogen release vertically downwards and horizontal to simulate an accidental leakage during bunkering. The indoor test (test 9) involved liquid hydrogen release inside a closed room to simulate an accident inside a tank connection space (TCS) connected to a ventilation mast.