Jet Fires: A Case Study

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1.1 Research Background Jet fires occur following the ignition and combustion of flammable fluids issuing continuously from a vessel, pipe or orifice, which burn close to the release plane. Jet fires dissipate thermal radiation away from the flame’s visible boundaries. The energy transmitted could be hazardous to both life and property. The pressure of release generates a long flame, which is stable under most conditions. A flash flame may take the form of jet flame on reaching the spill point. The duration of the jet fire is determined by the release rate and the capacity of the source. Flame length increases directly with flow rate. Typically a pressurized release of 8kg/s would have a length of 35m. The cross winds also affects the flame …show more content…

The principal situations in which flames occur by design are in burners and flares. Ejection of flammable fluid from a vessel, pipe or pipe flange can give rise to a jet flame if the material ignites. An intermediate situation, and one which particularly concerns the designer is where the jet flame result from ignition of flammable material vented from a pressure relief valve (Tong, Lo, Zhang &Chen, 2013). Scenario involving jet flames are not easy to handle, since a large jet flame may have a substantial reach, sometimes up to 50 m or more. Jet flames have been involved in a number of accidents, perhaps the most dramatic were the large jet flames from the gas riser on the Piper Alpha Oil platform. In other cases jet flames from pressure relief valves have caused adjacent vessels to overheat and burst, giving a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion or BLEVE (Tong, Lo, Zhang &Chen, …show more content…

Jet fire hazards should be evaluate seriously as this type of fire could be the initiating event to the large explosion (Joaquim Casal, Mercedes Gómez-Mares, Miguel Muñoz, Adriana Palacios, 2012). However, due to lack of improvement in development of risk assessment tool to evaluate jet fire hazards, the risk analysis cannot be conducted efficiently. Thus this lead to poor risk assessment evaluation. In response to this matter, it is important to develop a comprehensive risk assessment tool for jet fire hazards as to help a better understanding on the related matter. The risk assessment tool will be applying the validated jet fire model which is THORNTON