LIQUID NATURAL GAS-WATER REACTIONS

Abstract

Natural gas continues to grow in importance as a fuel in industrialized nations. Most often the sources of natural gas do not coincide geographically with areas of high demand. Many of the marine ventures span long distances such as Alaska-Japan, Algeria-U.S. or Great Britain, etc. Questions are raised by local and national regulatory agencies about possible hazards which may exist. One of the most often recurring questions originates from the presumption that a spill of LNG could occur as a result of a collision, or even an accident during transfer. In such cases, LNG would contact water and most certainly boil. The subsequent evolution of a cloud of inflammable vapor, carried downwind and dispersed, raises real questions of possible explosion and fire hazards. One important element of input data necessary in any dispersion calculation is the rate of vaporization of LNG on water. Such data are very scarce. Also, as recently publicized in some Bureau of Mines tests, there have been reports that LNG spills on water may lead to explosions that are not accompanied by a flame, but do show sufficiently high pressure waves to cause damage to equipment in the immediate vicinity of the spill. This article surveys the published and much of the unpublished literature dealing with the spill of LNG on water (and other liquids), presents new data on explosion hazards, and suggests a tentative mechanism which delineates, at least qualitatively, the origin of these explosions.