Experimental verification of a hydrogen risk assessment method

In this article, we report the experimental verification of the major stages of a hydrogen risk assessment method Experiments were conducted in a half-scale hallway The four-step method entailed simulating the accident scenario with leaking helium, calibrating a commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the accident scenario using helium data, predicting the spatial and temporal distribution of leaking hydrogen using the calibrated CFD model, and determining risk from the spatial and temporal distribution of hydrogen We compared predicted results from the calibrated CFD model with experimentally measured hydrogen data to verify the accuracy of the calibrated CFD model The experimental data showed that the method predicted the spatial and temporal hydrogen distribution in the hallway very well This capability forms the basis for risk analysis The hydrogen gas concentration distribution determines the likelihood of ignition - and severity of combustion - of hydrogen-air mixtures.