Sharif Digital Repository

In this study, a well-known Computational Fluid Dynamics software, so-called Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), has been used to simulate multiple ethanol pool fire scenarios. Influences and reciprocal impacts in terms of dynamics and growth of the pool fires have been investigated. Heat release rates temperature and flame shapes have been monitored as the main outputs of the simulations. Based on the simulation results, it can be concluded that the amounts of mass burning rate, the radiation energy and the pool fire flame height were significantly higher in multiple pool fires, when compared with the theoretical values obtained by the mere summation of single pool fires. Furthermore, the... 

Precipitation, aggregation, and breakup of asphaltene particles are studied under natural depletion and nitrogen injection processes by means of high pressure filtration and a photographic procedure coupled with image analysis. Filtration results show that nitrogen destabilizes asphaltenes extremely, and the problem is more severe for heavier crude samples. Bimodal histograms of particle size distribution show two agglomeration mechanisms: cluster aggregation dominant around bubble point pressure and diffusion limited far away. The fractal structure of aggregates is also altered by gas injection; it is observed that the flocculent masses grow in size and become more compact and organized... 

There are different well-established strategies for making a process plant inherently safer. The benefits of applying these strategies on reducing the overall risk inside a plant are obvious. However, some of these changes are rejected many times because they appear to be too costly. But if the effects of applying inherently safer design strategies are investigated not only on the processing costs of a plant but also on the potential accident costs, the decision would in fact be different. In this paper an optimization procedure is proposed which integrates both processing and accident costs for different design schemes. In this procedure, some of the design variables are chosen with regard... 

In this paper, a new method based on Fuzzy theory is presented to estimate the occurrence possibility of vapor cloud explosion (VCE) of flammable materials. This new method helps the analyst to overcome some uncertainties associated with estimating VCE possibility with the Event Tree (ET) technique. In this multi-variable model, the physical properties of the released material and the characteristics of the surrounding environment are used as the parameters specifying the occurrence possibility of intermediate events leading to a VCE. Factors such as area classification, degree of congestion of a plant and release rate are notably affecting the output results. Moreover, the proposed method... 

Dispersion of heavy gases is considered to be more hazardous than the passive ones. This is because it takes place more slowly. In this paper, based on the extensive experimental work of Hanna and Chang, the CFD model (Ansys-CFX) was tested compared with Kit Fox experiments. In order to accomplish this validation, the multiphase approach was employed as a new method in this area. In addition, the temperature gradient effects were investigated. The survey of wind speed was done taking factors such as time, height and direction into the consideration. To reduce the number of elements in computational domain, a combination of 2D and 3D geometries were utilized. Results showed that the wind... 

Dispersion of heavy gases is considered to be more hazardous than the passive ones. This is because it takes place more slowly. In this paper, based on the extensive experimental work of Hanna and Chang, the CFD model (Ansys-CFX) was tested compared with Kit Fox experiments. In order to accomplish this validation, the multiphase approach was employed as a new method in this area. In addition, the temperature gradient effects were investigated. The survey of wind speed was done taking factors such as time, height and direction into the consideration. To reduce the number of elements in computational domain, a combination of 2D and 3D geometries were utilized. Results showed that the wind... 

Air injection, and the resulting in-situ combustion process, utilizes an inexpensive injectant, air, to accelerate oil recovery and increase reserves. The potential of auto ignition of heavy oil during in situ combustion process was studied in KEM reservoir. The risk of carbonate decomposition due to high temperature was examined. The carbonate rock decomposition was taken at 650°C. The peak of low temperature combustion by producing CO was initiated at 275°C when air was injected. There was no risk of decomposition of the carbonate Sarvak formation due to high temperatures of the process. Enrichment of the injecting fluid by oxygen increased the possibility of ignition. Ignition occurred... 

A method based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA) was developed to study the phase behavior of multicomponent and multiphase systems. Upon application of the GA to the thermodynamic models which are commonly used to study the VLE, VLLE and LLE phase equilibria, the physically meaningful values for the Binary Interaction Parameters (BIP) of the models were obtained. Using the method proposed in this work the activity coefficients for components at infinite dilution, obtained from the local composition based models, can be accurately predicted comparing to the experimental data available in the literature. In this work, a Global Optimization Procedure (GOP) based on the GA was developed to obtain... 

Regarding the importance of rheological properties of water based drilling fluids, the effects of silica nanospheres, multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and two types of their hybrid, i.e. H1 (80 wt.% silica nanosphere/20 wt.% MWCNT) and H2 (50 wt.% silica nanosphere/50 wt.% MWCNT) on the viscosity and density of distilled water were investigated. According to the results, viscosity and density of the nanofluids increased with the concentration, while they were reduced by increasing the temperature. At high concentrations, the least increase in the viscosity of distilled water by adding the nanomaterials is related to H2 (8.2% increase at 1.0 wt.%). Likewise, the optimum operating... 

Surfactant flooding is known to lower the interfacial tension and, hence, reduces capillary forces responsible for trapping oil. Despite numerous experimental studies, little is known about the role of fracture geometrical properties on oil recovery efficiency during surfactant floods, especially in five-spot systems. In addition, application of sodium dodecyl sulfate for oil recovery in fractured media is not discussed well. In this study, two types of surfactant solutions have been injected into micromodels, which were initially saturated with crude oil, having different length, orientation, and distribution of fractures under oil-wet conditions. Precise analyses of continuously recorded... 

The paper presents an inventory, perhaps the most comprehensive till date, of the major process-industry accidents involving 'domino effect'. The inventory includes, among other relevant information, the sequence of accidents that had occurred in each domino episode. The information has been analyzed to identify several patterns which may be useful in further work on understanding domino effect and reducing the probability of its occurrence in future. A concept of 'local domino effect' has been introduced  

Detailed geological models of a reservoir may contain many more cells that can be handled by reservoir simulators due to computer hardware limitations. Upscaling is introduced as an effective way to overcome this problem. However, recovery predictions performed on a coarser upscaled mesh are inevitably less accurate than those performed on the initial fine mesh. Dual mesh method is an approach that uses both coarse and fine grid information during simulation. In the reconstruction step of this method, the equations should be solved numerically within each coarse block, which is a time consuming process. Recently, a new coarse-grid generation technique based on the vorticity preservation...