Towards the Simulation of Hydrogen Leakage Scenarios in Closed Buildings Using ContainmentFOAM

The increase of using hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels in power generation and mobility is expected to witness a huge leap in the next decades. However, several safety issues arise due to the physical and chemical properties of hydrogen, especially its wide range of flammability. In case of Hydrogen leakage in confined areas, Hydrogen clouds can accumulate in the space and their concentration can build up quickly to reach the lower flammability limit (LFL) in case of not applying a proper ventilation system. As a part of the Living Lab Energy Campus (LLEC) project at Jülich Research Centre, the use of hydrogen mixed with natural gas as a fuel for the central heating system of the campus is being studied. The current research aims to investigate the release, dispersion, and formation and the spread of a hydrogen cloud inside the central utility building at the campus of Jülich Research Centre in case of hypothetical accidental leakage. Such a leakage is simulated using the opensource containmentFoam package base on OpenFOAM CFD code to numerically simulate the behavior of the air-hydrogen mixture. The critical locations where hydrogen concentrations can reach the LFL values are shown.