Numerical study of the explosion characteristics and potential mitigation measures of ammonia in air

The Internal Energy Agency (IEA) considers ammonia (NH3) key to decarbonising shipping. A new report from the IEA believes it will be ammonia, not methanol, that must play a major role if shipping is to meet its ambitious emissions reductions targets. While the technical issues related to the combustion of ammonia in engines have already attracted considerable attention from the international combustion community. No study in the public domain addressed accidental combustion of potential leaks of NH3 in engine rooms, which are confined/semi-confined. Potential ignition, the resulting fire and explosion risk as mitigation measures such as venting should be considered to inform regulations and policy as well as the development of mitigation measures, such as venting. 

The PhD project aims to address the above issues with specific focus on vented explosion mitigation. The specific tasks include:

• Analyse the combustion characteristics of ammonia in the context of fire and explosion safety.              
• Establish a strategy to extend HyFOAM, the in-house modified computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for modelling hydrogen explosions developed within the frame of OpenFOAM, to ammonia explosions. The modified code will be named as NH3FOAM.
• Validate the predictions with published experimental data of similar fuels and/or any new data on ammonia explosions which may come out during the PhD.
• Conduct a series of CFD predictions to examine the effects of different venting strategies, considering the geometric layout and environment in the propulsion systems and engine room.Use the predictions to extend the engineering model for vented hydrogen explosions previously developed in the HySEA (Improving Hydrogen Safety for Energy Applications (HySEA) through pre-normative research on vented deflagrations) project to ammonia.

Open to candidates who pay UK/home rate fees. See UKCISA for further information.

You will need to meet the minimum entry requirements for our PhD programme and interests in developing skills in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling.