CFD analysis of dense gas dispersion in indoor environment for risk assessment and risk mitigation

Environmental risks are inherent in the operation of any complex chemical process industry. The indoor release of hazardous chemicals that are denser than air is a topic of special concern, since dense clouds tend to persist at ground level or human breath level which leads to a magnification of their harmful potential. In the present work, we propose a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based model for indoor risk assessment considering accidental release of a sustained, small, undetected leak of a dense toxic gas (chlorine) in an industrial indoor environment. Results from simulations show that the denser chlorine gas spreads like a liquid and flows all along the floor. At the same time, its concentration at a point away from the ground level increases slowly, thus showing that both stratification and dilution effects are present as the dense gas spreads. The implications of this spreading pattern from a risk assessment and risk mitigation point of view are discussed.