Modelling the mitigation of a hydrogen deflagration in a nuclear waste silo ullage with water fog

During the decommissioning of certain legacy nuclear waste storage plants it is possible that significant releases of hydrogen gas could occur. Such an event could result in the formation of a flammable mixture within the silo ullage and, hence, the potential risk of ignition and deflagration occurring, threatening the structural integrity of the silo. Very fine water mist fogs have been suggested as a possible method of mitigating the overpressure rise, should a hydrogen–air deflagration occur. In the work presented here, the FLACS CFD code has been used to predict the potential explosion overpressure reduction that might be achieved using water fog mitigation for a range of scenarios where a hydrogen–air mixture, of a pre-specified concentration (containing 800 L of hydrogen), uniformly fills a volume located in a model silo ullage space, and is ignited giving rise to a vented deflagration. The simulation results suggest that water fog could significantly reduce the peak explosion overpressure, in a silo ullage, for lower concentration hydrogen–air mixtures up to 20%, but would require very high fog densities to be achieved to mitigate 30% hydrogen–air mixtures.

► Use FLACS to model water fog mitigation of H2–air deflagrations in a silo ullage.
► Fog could significantly reduce the peak overpressure for mixtures up to 20% H2–air.
► Very high fog densities would be required to mitigate a 30% H2–air mixture.
► Ignition of corner H2 releases produces significantly higher overpressures.