International Journal of Safety

The Korean Society of Safety (한국안전학회)
권호 표지

A Flow Analysis of a Refrigeration Warehouse where an Unusual Death of an Operator Occurred by Deficiency of Oxygen

  • Park, Chan-Seong (Department of Physical Engineering, Central District Office of National Institute of Scientific Investigation) ;
  • Moon, Jung-Eun (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Kim, Yoon-Ho (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University) ;
  • Kim, Jin-Pyo (Department of Physical Engineering, Central District Office of National Institute of Scientific Investigation)
  • Published : 2006.12.31
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Abstract

A numerical flow analysis of the case of a refrigeration warehouse where an unusual death of an operator occurred by deficiency of oxygen is performed by using STAR-CD program of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The refrigeration room of the warehouse for storing the fruits maintains an atmosphere of 95% nitrogen and 5% oxygen by volume. When the operator was found dead in the refrigeration room, the room was in normal operating conditions except for the fact that the auxiliary door had been left open. For the flow analysis, unsteady 3-dimensional natural convection with mass transfer is considered. The flow analysis result is compared with the oxygen concentration level measured against time during on-site investigation. The change in oxygen concentration level in the warehouse due to the opening of the auxiliary door is found to be negligible.

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References

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