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Liquefied natural gas (LNG) leaks often lead to cascading accident disasters, including vapor cloud release, explosion, fire, and toxic gas release. The origin and evolution of each accidental disaster must be considered when assessing safety. This paper discusses the safety assessment project of an LNG gas storage station in Xuzhou, China. Multiple conceivable disasters due to the leakage of LNG storage tanks are simulated and analyzed using the computational fluid dynamic software FLACS. We studied different wind speeds interacting with the flammable vapor cloud area and creating frostbite in areas of low temperature. Diffusion simulations of vapor cloud explosion (VCE), thermal radiation, and the distribution of toxic substances were performed. The overpressure-impulse criterion was used to calculate the influence range of VCE. Heat flux, heat dose, and heat flux-heat dose criteria were used to calculate the safe distance for personnel in the event of fire. Based on the calculation results of the three latter criteria, this paper recommends using the heat flux criterion to evaluate fire accidents. The danger zone of each accident was compared. VCE accidents yielded the largest area.

To provide information concerning quantitative risk analysis of gas-storage caverns, it is vital to estimate the hazard area of dispersion caused by accidental leakage. The Gaussian plume model is selected to calculate the hazard area caused by continuous leakage; the method of analysis is validated using wind-tunnel experiments of acetylene. Fluent is used to simulate the hazard area of dispersion caused by instantaneous leakage; the method of numerical simulation is verified by Burro/Coyote trials. Furthermore, a sample underground gas-storage cavern in salt rock is examined with respect to the toxic threshold limit value and the upper and lower flammability limits. In doing so, the factors that influence the hazard range of dispersion from salt cavern are discussed. The results indicate that the hazard area decreases with an increase in wind speed and a decrease in atmospheric stability when the leakage is continuous. However, the hazard area decreases with a decrease in wind speed when leakage is instantaneous.