Dynamics of vented hydrogen-air deflagrations

Jérôme Daubech (1) , Christophe Proust (1) , Didier Jamois (1) , Emmanuel Leprette (1)

1 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques

The use of hydrogen as an energy carrier is a real perspective for Europe since a number of breakthroughs now enable to envision a deployment at the industrial scale. However some safety issues need to be further addressed but experimental data are still lacking especially about the explosion dynamics in realistic dimensions. A set of hydrogen-air vented explosions were thus performed in two medium scale chambers (1m3 and 10m3). Homogeneous mixtures were used (10% to 30% vol.). The explosion overpressure was measured inside the chamber and outside on the axis of the discharge from the vent. The incidence of the external explosion is clearly seen. All the results in this paper and the predictions from the standards differ greatly meaning that a significant effort is still required. It is the purpose of the French project DIMITRHY to help progressing.

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Jérôme Daubech, Christophe Proust, Didier Jamois, Emmanuel Leprette. Dynamics of vented hydrogen-air deflagrations. 4. International Conference on Hydrogen Safety (ICHS 2011), Sep 2011, San Francisco, United States. pp.NC. ⟨ineris-00973626⟩