Pool fire accident in an aboveground LFO tank storage: thermal analysis

Fire in an aboveground light fuel oil (LFO) tank storage can cause surrounding tanks to heat up considerably. The incident usually does not result in a fire in the thermally exposed adjacent tanks. Nonetheless, their structural systems are at risk of either collapsing or plastically deforming. Prior to performing a complete structural analysis of the mechanical response of the exposed adjacent tanks, however, heat flux from the flames of the burning tank to its surroundings needs to be determined and the thermal profiles consequently established in the exposed tanks are to be defined. An adequate numerical procedure is proposed in this paper. In the latter, radiative characteristics of the flame body are first established by engaging a solid flame radiation model and then incident radiative heat flux entering the adjacent tank is calculated subsequently accounting for the tank׳s ‘visibility’ and atmospheric absorptivity. In support of the numerical analysis, experiments on 300 cm diameter LFO pans are presented and data from the literature are gathered. In the final part of the paper, a parametric study is shown exploring effects of the wind speed, distance between the tanks, and the level of the LFO fuel contained in the tanks. While the effects of wind speed and the distance between the tanks are evaluated significant the effects of the observed fuel levels are found to be irrelevant.