Experimental Study and Simulation on Heat Exposed Liquid Filled Process Equipment

Heat exposure of process equipment is a complex problem area that has gained interest over the last years. The reason is that existing standards vague on the subject and operate with too low heat load compared to what has been found in experiments. It has also been shown that the subject is more complex than expected when the existing standards were formed. It has been clear lately that simple formulas will not cover all the aspects and variation of the phenomenon. It seems that multi physic simulations are needed to be able to predict the behaviour satisfactorily. VessFire is such a simulation system that can handle this problem and has been widely used the last years by several companies and projects. One of the major parameters that need to be modelled is the heat transfer phenomenon inside the equipment shell. This is a difficult task and it is not easy to find data for verification. This paper describes a number of experiments performed for verification purposes. The project was supported by The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway and is a result of the authorities’ need for better means in safety management as new technology is introduced. The simulation results show good agreement to the experiments and indicate that the simulation system gives a reasonably good representation of the phenomena.