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CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS

VOL. 48, 2016

A publication of

The Italian Association

of Chemical Engineering
Online at www.aidic.it/cet

Guest Editors: Eddy de Rademaeker, Peter Schmelzer
Copyright © 2016, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l.,
ISBN 978-88-95608-39-6; ISSN 2283-9216

Pool Evaporation at Higher Vapour Pressures
Abdelkarim Habib*, Bernd Schalau
Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und –Prüfung (BAM), Unter den Eichen 87, 12205 Berlin
karim.habib@bam.de

Hazardous substances with a boiling point close to ambient temperatures will evaporate at higher vapour
pressures, so that the evaporation takes places in the smooth transition between the evaporation at boiling
point and below boiling point, representing the transition between two different physical phenomena. Whilst
the evaporation at boiling point is driven by the available heat flux, the evaporation below boiling point is
driven by the concentration gradient between the pool surface and the ambient air. Available evaporation
models usually focused on the correct description of the mass transfer coefficient for temperatures below
boiling point. A formulation of the correct equation for the mass flow is rarely documented. Whilst the mass
transfer coefficient formulation is more or less equivalent in most models, the main difference occurs in the
formulation of the mass flow equation. In Fact two types of models can be identified: the models with a linear
pressure term and the models with a logarithmic pressure term. Whilst the logarithmic formulations result in an
infinite mass flow near boiling point, which is not plausible, the linear formulations reach (different) finite
values. Due to a lack of published experimental data it was not possible to determine whether the linear
approach is conservative, under predicting or more or less accurate close to the boiling point.
To evaluate the accuracy of each type of formulation, test series on liquid pools have been carried out at BAM
for substances like Water, Ethanol, Cyclohexane, and Acetone. The tests were done under ambient conditions
with a heatable, 90 cm diameter pool, so that the vapour pressures investigated ranged from 0 to close to 1
bar. The experimental data showed that neither of the linear nor the logarithmic formulation of the evaporation
models is able to predict correctly the mass flow close to the boiling point. The logarithmic approach heavily
over predicts the mass flow, while the linear approach is not conservative anymore when the vapour pressure
exceeds 0.7 bar.

1. Introduction

When assessing the hazards of the release of flammable and/or toxic liquids the evaporation has to be
considered. Releasing liquids with a boiling point close to the ambient temperature or heated substances, will
lead to an evaporation process at higher vapour pressures. Whilst the evaporation at temperatures far from
the boiling point is mainly dominated by the concentration gradient in the gas phase, a transition towards a
heat dominated process takes place when the liquid temperature approaches the boiling point. When
releasing a pressure-liquefied gas, the liquid phase forms a pool at boiling temperature. This temperature is
maintained as long as the heat flux from the surrounding, mainly the floor, is high enough to provide the heat
needed for the evaporation. When the floor cools down, the pool will also cool down and a transition from the
evaporation at a vapour pressure of 1 bar(a) towards the evaporation at lower vapour pressures will take
place.
Empirical evaporation models (e.g. Mackay 1973, Clancey 1974) exist in different formulations. Not only the
equations for the mass transfer coefficient differ significantly but the main difference results from the
formulation of the pressure term in the mass flow equations. In the original publication of Mackay/Matsugu the
mass flow is considered as linearly dependent on the vapour pressure. In the german Guideline KAS-18
(2010) a formulation of the Mackay/Matsugu model is used where the vapour pressure is taken into account
by a logarithmic function. The latter results from the work of Deutsch (1995) who used Stefan’s law to derive
this logarithmic formulation and found it to be conservative compared to his own experimental data.
Close to the boiling point, the linear pressure gives a finite value whilst the logarithmic term gives an infinite
value. As there is no experimental series known to the authors that can be used to evaluate both approaches,

DOI: 10.3303/CET1648017

Please cite this article as: Habib A., Schalau B., 2016, Pool evaporation at higher vapour pressures, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 48,
97-102 DOI:10.3303/CET1648017

own outdoor experiments of the evaporation under atmospheric conditions have been carried out at the
Federal institute for Materials Research and Testing.
Another relevant question when considering the evaporation of liquids is the evaporation in absence of wind.
This is mainly of interest when doing the hazard assessment for a hazardous substances warehouse. To
calculate the exact flow regime inside a warehouse is very complex and not expedient. Nevertheless it can be
assumed that the flow velocities inside a warehouse are very low. Most evaporation models are based on the
boundary layer assumption / theory and are therefore strongly dependent on the wind speed. For the
theoretical case of a “no wind” situation no mass flow can then be calculated. In order to investigate the lower
application limit of the empirical models, own experiments in a storage room and a warehouse were carried
out at BAM to assess the influence of natural venting as realistic as possible.

2. Experiments

In 2008 outdoor evaporation experiments were carried out with ethanol and cyclohexane in 3 basins of 0.5 m,
0.74 m and 1 m diameter (Habib 2011). The maximum liquid temperature reached during these trials was
50°C corresponding to a vapour pressure of 0.3 bar(a). As the interesting vapour pressure range is between
0.3 bar bas and 1 bar(a), which is not covered by these data, new experiments have been carried out in 2014
and 2015 with water and acetone in a basin of 0.88 m diameter heated by 7 heating plates of 2 kW power
each. The maximum liquid temperatures reached were 92°C (0.8 bar(a)) for water and 54°C (0.94 bar(a)) for
acetone.
The evaporation in a storage room or warehouse was also investigated. In 2008 measurements were done
with ethanol and cyclohexane in a storage room, reaching maximum temperatures of 44°C and maximum
vapour pressures of 0.25 bar(a). Comparable to the outdoor experiments of 2008 the range of high vapour
pressures was not covered in these test series, so that in 2015 new experiments were done in a warehouse
(L x W x H 22 m x 12 m x 6.75 m). As the risk for the formation of an ignitable gas cloud was very high due to
the high temperatures aimed at and a number of sources of ignition were present (e.g. heating plates and
other electrical equipment) only water was used. The maximum temperature reached was 89°C (0.7 bar(a)).

3. Evaporation models

Most empirical evaporation models are based on the assumption of convective material transport with a linear
dependency of the vapour pressure of the released liquid (Brauer 1971): = ∗ (1)
∗ = − , (2)

Derived from the Stefan-diffusion equation, some models use a logarithmic correlation with the vapour
pressure.

∗ = − ,− (3)
Close to the boiling point, the logarithmic correlation leads to unrealistic values of the mass flow.

The reference Temperature for calculating the physical properties of the gas phase is the average
temperature in the boundary layer as stated by (Brauer 1971, Eckert 1959): = 0.58 + 0.42 (4)
The mass transfer coefficient depends from the wind speed and the characteristic length in nearly all empirical
evaporation models. Some of them also take into account the physical properties of the substances by
implementing the diffusion coefficient and the kinematic viscosity through the Schmidt-Number. As shown in
earlier investigations (Habib 2011) the empirical evaporation models cover a broad range of values even for
low vapour pressures up to 0.3 bar(a). The model of Mackay/Matsugu with a logarithmic formulation of the
pressure term has proven to be conservative. The model of Clancey (1974) gives lower mass flow rates which
are closer to the experimental values (Habib et al. 2010). As the results of both models can be seen as the
upper and lower limit of the mass flows calculated by evaporation models, they are chosen for further
investigations.

Mackay / Matsugu

= ,, , ; = 4.819 ∗ 10 (5)
Clancey for circular pools

= 2.12 ∗ 10 , . (6)
4. Pressure term

To assess the influence of the pressure Term (linear or logarithmic) on the mass flow, the evaporation models
are reformulated as to obtain a pressure Term p*:

∗ = (7)
The pressure Term is calculated based on the experimentally determined mass flow, the fluid temperature and
the wind speed, as well as the mass transfer coefficient from the empirical models. Therefore if the value of p*
is below the curves of the linear or logarithmic pressure term, then the measured value is lower than the
calculated one and the model is conservative. Figure 1 and 2 show respectively the calculated pressure term
values with the model of Mackay/Matsugu and the model of Clancey.

Figure 1: Pressure term values calculated with the model of Mackay/Matsugu; reference Temperature:
average Temperature in the boundary layer

The temperature difference between the liquid and the surrounding air in the experiments reached a maximum
of 70 K. With such a high temperature difference a significant impact on the physical properties of the
substances and therefore on the Schmidt-Number and the calculated pressure Term is to be expected. In
Figure 1 the reference temperature is chosen as described by Eq(4) for the model of Mackay/Matsugu. Up to
a vapour pressure of 0.7 bar(a) the linear pressure term would give conservative results for most of the cases.
At higher vapour pressures, the linear pressure term is not conservative anymore, whilst the logarithmic
pressure term would always be conservative, but with unrealistic high values of the mass flow for vapour
pressures above 0.5 bar(a). In Habib and Schalau (2015) it was shown that choosing the temperature of the
ambient air as reference temperature would lead to a better agreement between the logarithmic assumption
and the measured values up to a vapour pressure of 0.7 bar(a). When the temperature of the ambient air is
chosen, the linear assumption is not conservative anymore. From that observation it can be concluded that
using the average temperature in the boundary layer from Eq(4) is the best choice when dealing with high
temperature gradients between the liquid phase and the surrounding atmosphere and will therefore be used in
the following.

Figure 2: Pressure Term Values calculated with the model of Clance;, reference Temperature: average
Temperature in the boundary layer

The mass transfer coefficient from the model of Clancey leads to higher deviations between the measured and
the calculated values than for the model of Mackay/Matsugu. As can be seen in Figure 2, nearly all values lay
above the linear curve and also above the logarithmic curve. Therefore the model of Clancey is not
conservative for the presented cases. The scatter of the values for the model of Clancey is mainly due to the
fact that no physical properties of the substances (apart from the molecular weight) are taken into account.
Whilst this approach allows us to carry out calculations even for substances for which no sufficient physical
properties are known, it leads to a considerably higher inaccuracy.
Based on the model of Mackay/Matsugu it was found by the authors, that increasing the factor b in Eq(5) from
4.89*10-6 to 5.6*10-6 leads to a conservative assessment of the evaporating mass flow by the linear pressure
term approach for all considered vapour pressures (Figure 3). For low vapour pressures below 0.3 bar(a) the
overestimation by the model of Mackay/Matsugu with the increased factor b increased. To get a better
approximation for all vapour pressures the authors propose to take the linear pressure Term at an exponent of
1.2, leading to a decrease of the overestimation for low vapour pressures and still giving conservative results
over the whole vapour pressure range except for a very few number of experiments as shown in Figure 3. In
summary this newly derived model is defined as follows: = 0.1 ∗ − , . (8)
= 5.6 ∗ 10 ,, , (9)

5. Evaporation in a confined space

Due to the direct proportionality of the mass flow and the wind speed in all evaporation models, in absence of
wind no mass transfer will be calculated, excepted for the model of Brötz who introduced a minimum Value for
this case (LIS 1995). Measurements in a storage room (Habib et al. 2010) and in the actual measurements in
a Warehouse showed that the wind speed in such confined spaces is very low and in the range of respectively
0.05 m/s and 0.1 m/s.
Based on Fick’s Equation and Stefan’s law the following formula can be derived for the (theoretical) case of no
wind situation: = (10)

100

Figure 3: Pressure Term Values calculated with the Habib/Schalau model presented in this paper; reference
Temperature: average Temperature in the boundary layer

Based on the results of the own indoor experiments, the factor a was fitted to the experimental values and
found to be 2.5. Incorporating this equation into the model described by Eq(8) and Eq(9) leads to a new set of
equations able to describe the evaporation for the whole range of wind speeds and vapour pressures. = 0.1 ∗ − , . (8)
= . ; 5.6 ∗ 10 ,, , (11)

Figure 4 shows the comparison of the new model presented in this paper with the model of Mackay/Matsugu
(with logarithmic pressure Term (pronuss 2015)) and the model of Clancey (with linear pressure Term) as well
as experimental values for the case of a 0.74 cm diameter pool of Ethanol at 30°C (vapour pressure =
0.1 bar(a)) over the wind speed. The new model is not only conservative but also more accurate than the
model of Mackay/Matsugu, whilst the model of Clancey is the closest to the experimental values but with a
clear tendency to underestimation.

Figure 4: Experimental and calculated values from the three evaporation models investigated in this paper for
a 0.74 cm diameter Ethanol pool at 30°C

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6. Conclusions

Experimental investigations of the evaporating mass flow in outdoor experiments under atmospheric
conditions as well as experiments in confined spaces were carried out at different vapour pressures ranging
up to values close to the boiling point. From the comparison of these experimental values with empirical
evaporation models it could be found, that the definition of the reference temperature has a significant impact
on the calculation results and that the average Temperature in the boundary layer should be used. The
experimental results also confirmed that the logarithmic formulation of the pressure term always leads to
conservative but, at higher vapour pressures, unrealistic high values, whilst the linear formulation
underestimates the mass flow for high vapour pressures. With a slightly increased mass transfer coefficient in
comparison to that of Mackay/Matsugu and the introduction of an exponential formulation of the pressure term
an equation was derived that results in a more accurate prediction of the experimental values. For the case of
evaporation in a no wind situation, based on the experiments carried out, a formulation was found, enabling
the authors to present a model able to cover all scenarios from no wind up to high vapour pressures.

Symbols

A in m² Pool area p* Pressure Term
D in m²/s Diffusioncoefficient R in J/(mol K) Universal Gas constant
L in m Characteristic Length Sc Schmidt Number
M in g/mol Molar Mass Tb in K Reference Temperature
m in g/s Mass flow TA in K Liquid temperature

p in Pa Ambient pressure u in m/s Wind speed in 10 m height
pA in Pa Vapour pressure of the substance β in m/s Mass transfer coefficient
pA,∞ in Pa Vapour pressure of the substance

in the ambient

Reference

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Clancey V.J., 1974, The evaporation and dispersion of flammable liquid spillages, Chemical Process Hazards
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Deutsch S.; 1995, Evaporation from liquid pools under atmospheric conditions, PhD Thesis, University of
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