Pool evaporation of hazardous substances in industrial storage dikes : a study on spatial and temporal temperature variations and its consequences

Abstract

Papers presented to the 11th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 20-23 July 2015.

Storage of hazardous products requires utilizing containment systems such as diking against the unintended release of these materials. In case of volatile compounds, the liquid contained by the dike will offer a large surface for evaporation. It is of major importance to calculate the evaporation rate since evaporation may create a toxic or flammable cloud. This study aimed to study the temperature distribution in a liquid pool during evaporation. Vertical and horizontal temperature distributions were recorded by a series of thermocouples and an infrared camera. Evaporation experiments were performed with acetone in a wind channel facility. Vertical experimental data highlight a thin cold liquid layer at surface which remains during the evaporation and the liquid level decrease. This influences strongly the evaporation rate. On the horizontal consideration, surface gradients were observed when cavity flow occurs. These gradients are not believed to influence significantly the overall evaporation rate. A focus was done on the error induced when considering only mean liquid temperature instead of a distributed profile on several correlations from literature.