Liquefied natural gas flow in the insulation wall of a cargo containment system and its evaporation

Abstract

A computational method was developed for temperature prediction in the insulation wall of a cargo containment system on ships carrying cryogenic fluids. A model problem was set up for complicated physical phenomena, such as multi-phase flow, multiple gas species, flow in a porous medium, and conjugate heat transfer. Specially designed codes were developed and hooked up with a Navier-Stokes equations solver to take care of the material properties of LNG and NG, such as the additional resistance in a porous medium, the evaporation mechanism, i.e., phase change, and mass transfer. The developed method was verified by examining the overall multi-phase flow behavior and temperature distribution in the physical domain of interest. The predicted solutions were in good agreement with the experimental data. The computational method can be adopted for use to many different structures, materials, and conditions and should be useful for the design of new LNG insulation wall systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.