United States Department of Transportation
i
Reducing Flammability for Bakken Crude Oil for Train Transport – Phase III
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2021-02-01
[PDF-1.76 MB]
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Edition:Final report (Jan 2020-Dec 2020)
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Abstract:Various crude oil train derailments in recent years have exposed critical shortcomings in existing rail infrastructure. These incidents lead to large oil spills, and the oil finds itself in the presence of various hot surfaces on the site (such as wheel wells). This is an especially dangerous situation in the case of Bakken crude, which is of a light variety and contains significant amounts of easy-to-evaporate, easy-to-ignite light ends, and the result is usually an intense fireball. Previous research done by Prof. Albert Ratner et al. under MATC-DOT sponsorship has concluded that polymeric additives improve fire safety in diesel fuel and its blends by suppressing splashing, delaying ignition, and promoting flame extinction. There is a strong indication that the same will be true for crude oil as well. As of December 31, 2020, research efforts continued the work that would help accomplish the goals of a larger, five-year project to improve fire safety during transportation by adding long-chain polymers and carbon-based nanoparticles to crude oil before shipping. The experimental droplet combustion and post-processing software has been refitted and upgraded. It was used to analyze combustion characteristics and settling characteristics of carbon-based nanoparticles (acetylene black, multi-walled carbon nanotube, graphene nanoparticles) in Bakken crude oil, as well as renewable jet fuel. These works have resulted in several published manuscripts and are expected to help model the combustion characteristics of crude oil. Moreover, these results are unique. These works will also help to evaluate splashing characteristics of crude oil and how to modify them to make crude oil transport safer.
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