Abstract
A horizontally oriented jet fire could occur if the leaking liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the side surface of a pipe or storage tank was ignited. Previous work with LNG mostly focused on pool fires. In the present study, horizontally oriented LNG jet fires were studied through 10 open field full scale tests. The flames were visualized by both infrared and video cameras. The recorded flame shapes are compared and analysed. Peak temperatures and heat fluxes at various flow rates were measured and recorded. For relatively low reservoir pressure, a small amount of LNG was found to spray through the fire and rainout onto the ground, forming an LNG pool. A correlation was established to calculate the flame length from the mass flow rate.
•Field tests were conducted using horizontally oriented nozzle for flashing LNG jet fires with release rates from 0.01 kg/s to 0.075 kg/s.•The peak temperature of the LNG jet fire stabilized at about 1100 °C.•In some cases, the released LNG did not completely vaporize in the flame zone but rained out, resulting in LNG pool fire.•Incident radiative heat fluxes were almost constant near the nozzle but increased with the release rate further away.•A new correlation was proposed to correlate the measured flame length with mass flow rate.