Consequence Modelling and Analysis of Methane Explosions: A prelimi-nary Study on Biogas Stations

Abstract

Biomass is one of the most important sources of renewable energy. Biomass resources can be utilized by producing biogas in the biogas stations, which include process equipment operating in critical conditions. In this study, a consequence analysis of a methane gas explosion carried out to estimate the explosion and the toxic threat zones of a biogas station in Turkey. ALOHA and PHAST Software Tools are used to realize an explosion by modelling scenarios and thus to estimate the effects of an explosion just to get an insight on methane gas explosion. By using ALOHA software, two different scenarios as leakage from the biogas tank and flammable chemical escaping directly into the atmosphere are designed and calculated by the Gaussian model. In addition to that, two different explosion scenarios as a leakage scenario from the biogas storage tank and a catastrophic rupture scenario are computed by using the PHAST Software. According to the first scenario results from ALOHA, explosions can cause destruction of buildings, serious injuries and shattering of glasses in the threat zones about 200 m while in the second scenario only shattering of glasses can be seen in 22 m of threat zone. The results from the PHAST show that threat zones do not change significantly at different weather conditions. It is found that the catastrophic rupture has maximum hazard zone limits among all the scenarios. It has been concluded that using different model-based software can be useful to understand possible results of biogas plant explosions.