Technical Bulletin 7, March 2011

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FLARESIM TECHNICAL BULLETIN 7
Flaresim offers the ability to perform two types of surface temperature calculations.
The first is a calculation of the final equilibrium temperature that will be reached
after prolonged flaring. The second is a calculation of the rate of temperature rise.
Equilibrium Surface Temperature
The equilibrium surface temperature of metal surfaces exposed to the thermal
radiation is calculated from a heat balance between the thermal radiation from the
flare incident at the specified point and the heat losses from the same point.
where
= Heat input due to radiation btu/hr/ft
2
= Absorbtivity of surface
= Ratio of surface area losing heat to surface area receiving radiation
= Heat loss due to convection btu/hr/ft
2
= Heat loss due to re-radiation btu/hr/ft
2
The radiative heat loss is given by:
where
= Stephan Boltzman constant (0.171 x 10-8 btu/hr/ft
2
/(R
4
)
= Emissivity of metal surface
= Temperature metal at equilibrium R
= Temperature surroundings R
The convective heat loss is given by:
where
= Heat transfer coefficient btu/hr/ft2/R
(1)
(2)
(3)
K Y H
c
H
r
+ ( ) =
K

Y
H
c
H
r
H
r
H
r
E T
m
4
T

4
( ) =

E
T
m
T

H
c
H
c
h
c
T
m
T

( ) =
h
c
Surface Temperature Calculations
Technical Bulletin 7, September 2010
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FLARESIM TECHNICAL BULLETIN 7
Convective heat transfer coefficients are calculated from two empirical correlations
that are a function of wind velocity.
where
= Wind velocity in ft/s
The above equations show the default constants used by Flaresim. Both these
constants and the transition wind speed can be modified by the user.
A default value of 0.7 is used for both the absorbtivity and emissivity of the surface.
These values which are appropriate for steel can be updated by the user.
An iterative calculation is performed to find the equilibrium surface of the metal
such that the equality in equation 1 is satisfied.
Rate of Temperature Rise
The rate of temperature rise of a surface is calculated from the equation
where
= Duration of time step hr
= Heat gained by surface btu/ft
2
and are calculated using equations 2 and 3 as above but using in place
of where is the average temperature over the time step given by.
(4)
(5)
(6)
0 u

15
h
c
0.80 0.22u

+ =
u

15 >
h
c
0.56u

0.75
=
u

T
m
K Y H
r
H
c
+ ( ) ( ) t H
m
0 =
t
H
m
H
r
H
c
T
av
T
m
T
av
Technical Bulletin 7, September 2010
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FLARESIM TECHNICAL BULLETIN 7
where
and are surface temperature at previous and new time steps.
The heat gained by the surface is given by the equation
where
= Mass per unit surface area lb/ft2
= Specific heat capacity of surface btu/ft2/R
An iterative calculation is used to determine for each time step such that
the heat balance equation 6 is satisfied.
(7)
(8)
T
av
0.5 T
t t +
T
t
+ ( ) =
T
t
T
t t +
H
m
H
m
M Cp T
t t +
T
t
( ) =
M
Cp
T
t t +
t