Annular Air Leaks in a liquid hydrogen storage tank
Open accessAbstract
Large liquid hydrogen (LH2) storage tanks are vital infrastructure for NASA, the DOD, and industrial users. Over time, air may leak into the evacuated, perlite filled annular region of these tanks. Once inside, the extremely low temperatures will cause most of the air to freeze. If a significant mass of air is allowed to accumulate, severe damage can result from nominal draining operations. Collection of liquid air on the outer shell may chill it below its ductility range, resulting in fracture. Testing and analysis to quantify the thermal conductivity of perlite that has nitrogen frozen into its interstitial spaces and to determine the void fraction of frozen nitrogen within a perlite/frozen nitrogen mixture is presented. General equations to evaluate methods for removing frozen air, while avoiding fracture, are developed. A hypothetical leak is imposed on an existing tank geometry and a full analysis of that leak is detailed. This analysis includes a thermal model of the tank and a time-to-failure calculation. Approaches to safely remove the frozen air are analyzed, leading to the conclusion that the most feasible approach is to allow the frozen air to melt and to use a water stream to prevent the outer shell from chilling.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The boil-off rate of NASA spherical tanks was estimated to be 563 kg/day, which translates to an evaporation rate of nearly 0.25% per day.
“The boil-off rate was estimated to be 563 kg/day [30], which translates to an evaporation rate of nearly 0.25 % per day [31].”
From Strategies to recover and minimize boil-off losses during liquid hydrogen storage (2023) · cites this paper as [30]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 5
- Krenn AG et al. 2015 The safe removal of frozen air from the annulus of an LH2 storage tank. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. 101
- Geisler M 2010 Thermal Characterization by freezing of carbon dioxide as a filler gas Dissertation to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Wurzburg
- Wang M, Wang J, Pan N, & Chen S 2007 Mesoscopic predictions of the effective thermal conductivity for microscale random porous media Physical Review E 75(3) 036702
- Alkan C et al. 2009 Preparation, characterization and thermal properties of lauric acid/expanded perlite as novel form-stable composite phase change material Chemical Engineering Journal 155 899-904
- Krenn AG 2012 Diagnosis of a poorly performing liquid hydrogen bulk storage sphere Advances in Cryogenic Engineering: Transactions of the Cryogenic Engineering Conference A 376-383
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Strategies to recover and minimize boil-off losses during liquid hydrogen storage
Morales-Ospino, R., Celzard, A., & Fierro, V. (2023) · Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.rser.2023.113360 · Cited by 216 · see citing works
- Authors
- Krenn, A., Youngquist, R., & Starr, S.
- Affiliations
- Kennedy Space Center (US)
- Venue
- IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2017-12
- Volume
- 278
- Pages
- 012065
- ISSN
- 1757-8981 (ISSN-L)
- 1757-899X
- OpenAlex
- W2777276931
- Cited by
- 8
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- IOP Conference Series Materials Science and Engineering (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- NASA STI Repository (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Aerospace Engineering › Spacecraft and Cryogenic Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Phase Change Materials Research
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Superconducting Materials and Applications
- Keywords
- liquid hydrogen tank, thermal conductivity, void fraction, time to failure
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
