The use of CFD for the design of hydrogen bulk storage areas – FLUG Week 2021

This presentation is part of FLUG Week 2021.

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About the presentation

Title: The use of CFD for the design of hydrogen bulk storage areas

There are few available relevant guidance documents/standards for the design of these areas in terms of safety during an ignited event (e.g. COP CP 33). Based on a case study on a real facility undertaken by Gexcon, it is felt that the safety distances outlined in the code of practice could be under-predicted in some circumstances, which could lead to inadequate separation distances, resulting in non-conservative designs, higher risks, non-ALARP designs, etc. This presentation aims to investigate the discrepancies between the currently available guidance with the results from our case study.

About the speaker

Pablo Giacopinelli

Senior Engineer @ Gexcon

Pablo is a Senior Engineer and FLACS-CFD technical lead at Gexcon UK, where he has worked for the last 7 years. He has more than 10 years of experience in conducting CFD studies in various industries, including O&G, nuclear, biomass, and civil and aerospace engineering, with a primary focus on modelling the consequences of explosion and fire phenomena, and dispersion hazards such as flammable vapours and toxic exposures. He is an Aeronautical Engineer graduated from the National University of La Plata (Argentina) with postgraduate studies at the University of Manchester (UK).

Graham Morrison

Consulting Director UK — Shell Software Product Manager @ Gexcon

Graham is the Consulting Director of Gexcon UK and the Product Manager of Shell software. He has ten years of process safety consulting experience, including various hydrogen projects. As part of his role as Product Manager for the Shell software products, FRED, Shepherd, and PIPA, he has been involved in testing the application of the modelling tools to hydrogen problems. He also holds an MBA (Global Energy) from Warwick Business School, which is heavily focused on the energy transition.

About FLUG

The FLACS User Group (FLUG) is a high-profile discussion forum for engineers, safety experts, and industry scholars.

FLUG meets to discuss new software developments and safety-related topics. Its work has played an integral role in the development of Gexcon’s industry-leading software, which represents more than 40 years of extensive and unrivalled modelling and validation work.

Other FLUG Week 2021 presentations

• The direction of FLACS-CFD by Chris Coffey, VP Products @ Gexcon
• Beyond boxes and cylinders – the challenges and opportunities for using mesh geometries in FLACS-CFD by Djurre Siccama, Senior Manager @ Gexcon
• FLACS-CFD Validation and Sensitivities by Shona Mackie, Senior Research Engineer @ Gexcon
• FLACS-Fire recent developments, validation, and future plans by Deiveegan Muthusamy, Principal Research Engineer @ Gexcon
• Using FLACS-Fire on real cases: a user experience by Francesco Chillè, Independent Consultant @ FCSolutionS
• Investigations on pool evaporation and vapour cloud explosions in Industrial environments by Sai Mahith Thummaluru, Safety Engineer @ BASF
• FLACS used for hydrogen and hydrogen fuels by Olav Roald Hansen, CEO, and founder @ HYEX Safety AS
• Safety analysis and risk control of shore-based bunkering operations for a hydrogen-powered ship by FENG Yuxiang, Process Engineer @ China Classification Society (CCS)
• Recent research activity at Gexcon by Lorenzo Mauri, Principal Research Engineer @ Gexcon
• Uncertainties in probabilistic explosion risk analysis by Prankul Middha, Principal Consultant and Director @ Abercus
• DDT Evaluation with FLACS by Jihui Geng, Senior Principal Scientist @ BakerRisk
• Advanced dispersion modelling of hydrogen cyanide in a closed environment by Jake Connor, Graduate Engineer @ Gexcon
• Consequence modelling of hazardous chemicals in polymer industries by Gokul Mahajan, Technical Team Lead – Projects @ Gexcon