Experimental Study on Propane Jet Fire Hazards: Thermal Radiation

Jet fires is a of the major hazards in the oil and gas industry, and half of the reported jet fires caused domino effect to enlarge the incident. The Piper Alpha accident is one of the most serious accidents associated with thermal hazard of jet fires to offshore installations. Risk assessment on the thermal hazard of jet fires has to deal with many uncertainties, which pose a need to gather more data through experiments. Previous work with propane was focusing on the vertical jet fires. In this work, both horizontal and vertical fires were studied through 21 tests conducted in Brayton Fire Training Field. The fires were sustained by either vapor or liquid propane. The radiation intensity of jet fires was measured using radiometers, and the flame geometry was captured using both video and infrared cameras. The experimental data was analyzed to develop correlations for the radiation intensity at various locations, and surface emissive power with flow rates and geometry features. The solid flame model was adopted to predict the radiation intensity, and the key parameters were determined by comparing the experimental data, which were evaluated using several statistical performance measures. The results gathered in this work will help to study the thermal hazard of propane jet fires and eliminate the uncertainties for the risk assessment.