• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.568-580
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• 1998

A sodium-concrete reaction facility with a test chamber of 0.226㎥($\Phi$0.6m$\times$H0.8m) was constructed to carry out experiments of sodium-concrete reaction which might take place in sodium metal fast-breeder reactor Utilizing this facility, several experiments were conducted to closely examine the characteristics of sodium-concrete reactions under different conditions : Sodium mass : 100, 250g ; Sodium temperature : 450, 550, $650^{\circ}C$ ; Concrete age = 30, 45, 50, 90days. Our experiments show that the amount of the H2 generated by sodium-concrete reaction has increased up to its flammable range as the amount of spilled sodium and its temperature have increased. The maximum hydrogen concentration was 31mo1% at the concrete age of 30days, sodium temperature : 55$0^{\circ}C$, and sodium mass : 250g. The major components of sodium-concrete reaction products were also determined as Na$_2$SiO$_3$ and NaAlO$_2$.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.130-137
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• 2016

At a brewery, the base plate-to-shell weld seam of a $90-m^3$ vertical cylindrical steel tank failed catastrophically. The 4 ton tank "took off" like a rocket leaving its contents behind, and landed on a van, crushing it. The top of the tank reached a height of 30 m. The internal overpressure responsible for the failure was an estimated 60 kPa. A rupture disc rated at < 50 kPa provided overpressure protection and thus prevented the tank from being covered by the European Pressure Equipment Directive. This safeguard failed and it was later discovered that the rupture disc had been installed upside down. The organizational root cause of this incident may be a fundamental lack of appreciation of the hazards of large volumes of low-pressure compressed air or gas. A contributing factor may be that the standard piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) symbol for a rupture disc may confuse and lead to incorrect installation. Compressed air systems are ubiquitous. The medium is not toxic or flammable. Such systems however, when operated at "slight overpressure" can store a great deal of energy and thus constitute a hazard that ought to be addressed by safety managers.

• Korean Journal of Hazardous Materials
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.23-29
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• 2018

The fire and explosion properties necessary for waste, safe storage, transport, process design and operation of handling flammable substances are lower explosion limits(LEL), upper explosion limits(UEL), flash point, AIT( minimum autoignition temperature or spontaneous ignition temperature), fire point etc., An accurate knowledge of the combustion properties is important in developing appropriate prevention and control measures fire and explosion protection in chemical plants. In order to know the accuracy of data in MSDSs(material safety data sheets), the flash point of phenol was measured by Setaflash, Pensky-Martens, Tag, and Cleveland testers. And the AIT of phenol was measured by ASTM 659E apparatus. The explosion limits of phenol was investigated in the reference data. The flash point of phenol by using Setaflash and Pensky-Martens closed-cup testers were experimented at $75^{\circ}C$ and $81^{\circ}C$, respectively. The flash points of phenol by Tag and Cleveland open cup testers were experimented at $82^{\circ}C$ and $89^{\circ}C$, respectively. The AIT of phenol was experimented at $589^{\circ}C$. The LEL and UEL calculated by using Setaflash lower and upper flash point value were calculated as 1.36vol% and 8.67vol%, respectively. By using the relationship between the spontaneous ignition temperature and the ignition delay time proposed, it is possible to predict the ignition delay time at different temperatures in the handling process of phenol.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2021

Cryogenic vessels are special equipment that requires periodic evaluation of their thermal insulation performance. At the current standard, the test is considered as the loss product or heat leakage of cryogenic vessel, which takes over 72 h to evaluate; consequently, a large amount of working medium is discharged to the environment in the process. However, hydrogen is flammable and explosive, and the discharged gas may be dangerous. If liquid hydrogen is replaced with liquid nitrogen before testing, the operation then becomes complicated, and the loss product or heat leakage cannot respond to the thermal insulation performance of cryogenic vessels for liquid hydrogen. Therefore, a novel method is proposed to evaluate the heat leakage of cryogenic vessels for liquid hydrogen in self-pressurization. In contrast to the current testing methods, the method proposed in this study does not require discharge or exchange of working medium in all test processes. The proposed method is based on one-dimensional heat transfer analysis of cryogenic vessels, which is verified by experiment. When this method is used to predict the heat leakage, the comparison with the experimental data of the standard method shows that the maximum error of heat leakage is less than 5.0%.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.105-110
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• 2019

Most titanium alloy waste with cutting oil was discarded without recycling process so that it can be caused by metal and oil fires. However, there is no fire management system and studies on the titanium or titanium alloy waste in spite of high fire risk. The purpose of this experimental study is to identify the fire risk of the titanium alloy waste with cutting oil. We collected the 120g waste which was made in the biomedical titanium alloy cutting process. The waste was burned and conducted thermal image analysis with infrared camera. The experimental results which illustrated the process, characteristics, and trends of fire are presented. Firstly, the cutting oil was burned and partially the titanium alloy waste was burned. The maximum temperature of the fire was more than $650^{\circ}C$ in some specific spots. These results means when a lot of titanium alloy waste with cutting oil was ignited, this fire could connect the titanium fire. In other words, the fire has a flammable liquid fire and combustible metal fire at the same time. The experimental study could be used fire prevention, response, and investigation of the titanium alloy waste.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.523-532
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• 2019

Different types of gas reservoir such as Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) are among the strategic infrastructures, and have great importance for any government or their private owners. To keep the tank and its contents safe during earthquakes especially if the contents are of hazardous or flammable materials; using seismic protection systems such as base isolator can be considered as an effective solution. However, the major deficiency of this system can be the large deformation in the isolation level which may lead to the failure of bearing system. In this paper, as a solution, the efficacy of an optimally designed combined vibration control system, the combined laminated rubber isolator and rotational friction damper, is investigated to evaluate the enhancement of an existing metal tank response under both far- and near-field earthquakes. Responses like impulsive and convective accelerations, base shear, and sloshing height are studied herein. The probabilistic framework is used to consider the uncertainties in the structural modeling, as well as record-to-record variability. Due to the high calculation cost of probabilistic methods, a simplified structural model is used. By using the Mont-Carlo simulation approach, it is revealed that this combined isolation system is a highly reliable system which provides considerable enhancement in the performance of reservoir, not only leads to the reduction of probability of catastrophic failure of the tank but also decrease the reservoir damage during the earthquake. Moreover, the relative displacement of the isolation level is controlled very well by this combined system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.1-6
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• 2021

Hydrogen is considered a cleaner energy source than fossil fuels. As a result, the use of hydrogen in daily life and economic industries is expected to increase. However, the use of hydrogen energy is currently limited because of safety issues. The rate of combustion of the hydrogen mixture is about seven times higher than that of hydrocarbon fuels. The hydrogen mixture is highly flammable and has a low minimum ignition energy. Therefore, it presents considerable risks for fire and explosions in all areas of hydrogen manufacturing, transportation, storage, and use. In this study, the auto-ignition characteristics of hydrogen were investigated numerically for diluted hydrogen mixtures. Auto-ignition temperature, a critical property predicting the fire and explosion risk in hydrogen combustion, was determined in well-stirred reactors. When N₂ and CO₂ were used to dilute the hydrogen/air mixture, the ignition delay time increased with increasing dilution ratios in both cases. The CO₂-diluted mixtures exhibited a longer ignition delay than the N₂-diluted mixtures. We also confirmed that lower initial ignition temperatures increased the ignition delay times at 950 K and above. Overall, the auto-ignition characteristics, such as the concentrations of participating species and ignition delay times, were primarily affected by the initial temperature of the mixture.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.28-34
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• 2021

Among the currently available types of fuel, LNG emits a relatively small amount of nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide when it burns in the engine. However, since LNG is a flammable material, leakage during bunkering can lead to accidents, such as fires. Therefore, it is necessary to install a remote operation emergency shut-down (ESD) valve to block the flow and leakage of LNG in an emergency situation that occurs during bunkering. The ESD valve uses a hydraulic driving device consisting of a hydraulic control valve and a hydraulic motor to control globe valve disc displacement, which regulates the flow path for LNG transfer. At this time, there are various nonlinearities in hydraulic driving devices; hence, it is necessary to design a controller with robust control performance against these uncertainties. In this study, modeling of the ESD valve was carried out, and a sliding mode controller to control the displacement of the globe valve disc was designed. As a result, it was confirmed that the designed control performance could be achieved by overcoming nonlinearity characteristics using the designed controller.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.2960-2973
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• 2022

Since Fukushima nuclear power plant (NPP) accident in 2011, the importance of research on various severe accident phenomena has been emphasized. Particularly, detailed analysis of combustion risk is necessary following the containment damage caused by combustion in the Fukushima accident. Many studies have been conducted to evaluate the risk of local hydrogen concentration increases and flame propagation using computational code. In particular, the potential for combustion by local hydrogen concentration in specific areas within the containment has been emphasized. In this study, the process of flame propagation generated inside a reactor core to containment during a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) was analyzed using MELCOR 2.1 code. Later in the LOCA scenario, it was expected that hydrogen combustion occurred inside the reactor core owing to oxygen inflow through the cold leg break area. The main driving force of the oxygen intrusion is the elevated containment pressure due to the molten corium-concrete interaction. The thermal and mechanical loads caused by the flame threaten the integrity of the containment. Additionally, the containment spray system effectiveness in this situation was evaluated because changes in pressure gradient and concentrations of flammable gases greatly affect the overall behavior of ignition and subsequent containment integrity.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2022

The common algae and industrial waste, chlorella and red mud, were co-pyrolyzed in carbon dioxide condition to fabricate iron-biochar composite. In order to investigate the direct effect of chlorella and red mud in the syngas generation and the property of biochar, experiments were performed using mixture samples of chlorella and red mud. The evolution of flammable gasses (H₂, CH₄, CO) was monitored during pyrolysis. The produced biochar composite was employed as a catalyst for persulfate activation for methylene blue removal. BET analysis indicated that the iron-biochar composite mainly possessed meso- and macropores. The XRD analysis revealed that hematite (Fe₂O₃) contained in red mud was transformed to Fe₃O₄ during co-pyrolysis. The composite effectively activated persulfate and removed methylene blue. Among the composite samples, the composite fabricated from the mixture composed of 1:2 chlorella:red mud showed the best performance in syngas generation and methylene blue removal.