Numerical simulation of wall temperature on gas pipeline due to radiation of natural gas during combustion

This paper presents one of the possible hazardous situations during transportation of gas through the international pipeline. It describes the case when at high-pressure gas pipeline, due to mechanical or chemical effect, cracks and a gas leakage appears and the gas is somehow triggered to burn. As a consequence of heat impingement on the pipe surface, change of material properties (decreasing of strength) at high temperatures will occur. In order to avoid greater rapture a reasonable pressure relief rate needs to be applied. Standards in this particular domain of depressurizing procedure are not so exact (DIN EN ISO 23251; API 521). This paper was a part of the project to make initial contribution in defining the appropriate procedure of gas operator behaving during the rare gas leakage and burning situations on pipeline network. The main part of the work consists of two calculations. The first is the numerical simulation of heat radiation of combustible gas, which affects the pipeline, done in the FLUENT software. The second is the implementation of obtained results as a boundary condition in an additional calculation of time resolved wall temperature of the pipe under consideration this temperature depending on the incident flux as well as a number of other heat flow rates, using the Matlab. Simulations were done with the help of the “E.ON Ruhrgas AG” in Essen