Expansion of Air from a Pressurized Vessel

by Devin Ulrey

Submitted : Spring 2010

I was assigned a problem in which I had to determine the final mass and temperature inside of a tank. To do this, I used a first order Euler numerical method to find the approximate final values. The Euler method uses the combination of small intervals (0.1 seconds in this experiment), rates of change, and initial values to make an approximation. I determined that it took approximately 64 seconds for the pressure inside of the tank to reach atmospheric pressure. When the pressures become equal, the tank stops expelling its contents. I have concluded that if this is a design plan for a company that was looking for efficiency in use of mass, this tank would not be a good choice. Since about 1.9 kilograms were expelled, that means this tank used approximately 54 percent of its mass. Thus, 46 percent (1.6 kilograms) is left in the container to be wasted.

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