Experimental and Numerical Study on the Gas Explosion in Urban Regulator Station

Regulator station is an important part in the urban gas transmission and distribution system. Once gas explosion occurs, the real explosion process and consequences of methane gas explosion in the regulator station were not revealed systematically. In this study, a full-scale experiment was carried out to simulate the regulator station explosion process, and some numerical simulations with a commercial CFD software called FLACS were conducted to analyze the effect of ignition and vent conditions on the blast overpressure and flame propagation. The experimental results demonstrated that the peak overpressure increased as the distance from the vent increased within a certain distance. And the maximum overpressure appeared 3 m away from the door, which was about 36.6 kPa. It was found that the pressure-time rising curves obtained from the simulation are basically the same as the ones from the experiment, however, the time of reaching the peak pressure was much shorter. The numerical simulation results show that the peak overpressures show an increase trend as the ignition height decreased and the vent relief pressure increased. It indicates that the damage and peak overpressure of gas explosion could be well predicted by FLACS in different styles of regulator station. In addition, the results help us to understand the internal mechanism and development process of gas explosion better. It also offers technical support for the safety protection of the urban regulator station.