Numerical study of natural convection in a liquefied natural gas tank

Natural convection in a liquefied natural gas storage tank, which is caused by the heat absorption from the surrounding environment, is studied numerically by solving the conservation equations for mass, momentum, and energy with a commercial computational fluid dynamics code, FLUENT. The present numerical results show that the interfacial heat transfer rate, which is directly related to the boil-offgas generation rate, strongly depends on the liquid-solid contact area. The contribution of the heat transfer rate from the vapor region is negligible compared with that from the liquid region. The effects of the external convection coefficient, tank size, and tank shape on the flow and temperature fields and on the interfacial heat flux are quantified.