Burst of hydrogen storage tank in a military facility

This event is probably the first historical case of a failure of hydrogen storage
The soldiers of the Royal Prussian Air Ship Division stored large amounts of hydrogen gas at the military airport Tempelhof, in Berlin. Hydrogen was kept in approximately 1000 cylinders in a shed. On 25 May 1894 about 70 of them burst without apparent reason.
The incident consisted of two explosions in 2 second distance, and the damage was considerable.

The storage buliding, made of wooden, disappeared from the ground. Several cylinders, heavy more than hundred kg, were catapulted through the air like grenades and, after dropping, bored half a meter into the ground, 300 steps away. Large iron pieces still were found 1500 m away.

Some cylinders flew into the gasometer, into the nacelle and into the barracks. The gasometer (supposed to contain ca. 700 m3 gas) burnt down bud did not explode.
Othe damaged the nacelles, where a small fire developed which could be extinguished quickly.
Two cylinders were projected into the barracks: one penetrated a bed which was not occupied, and the other, after penetrating the roof, lied on a beam, directly above an occupied bed. Several other cylinders which had not failed, were damaged by the explosion and lost hydrogen gas, providing an additional hazard.

The remaining unexploded gas bottles were salvaged by the fire brigade out of the burning debris with great cautiousness, due to the hazard of further explosions.

The INITATING CAUSE was assumed the cracking on one cylinder which leaked forming an explosive atmosphere, ignited by sparks produced mechanically.

The most plausible cause analysis has been provided by (Boellinghaus, 2014):
(1) Hydrogen uptake at the internal surface from wetted and impure storage gas, promoted by substances like hydrogen phosphide and perhaps by impurities.
(2) Material degradation by hydrogen over time, after many emptying and re-filling cycles, resulting in a total ductility loss.
(3) Cracking of cylinders under the nominal internal pressure, leaking hydrogen into the closed cabin and formation of a flammable hydrogen-air mixture in the wooden cabin. Also leaking of cylinders cannot be excluded.
(4) Ignition of the gas mix by fragments or tilting of burst cylinders and subsequent explosion causing the failure of a limited number of additional cylinders, leading to erasure of the storage building and to the surrounding damage.

The ROOT CAUSE could be identified as design error, (knowledge hydrogen effect on metals at room temperature was already known at that time). A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR was the low purity of the stored hydrogen, which contained corrosive substance facilitating and accelerating hydrogen embrittlement.

gasometer, nacelle, barracks

The hydrogen was mainly used for experimental air tansport with balloons and airships (zeppelins).
The storage building measured 12 m in length, 6 m in width and 2 m in height.
One cylinder contained ca. 7.5 m3 (ca. 0.6 kg) hydrogen and had a volume of 40 l. All cylinders had been pressure tested at ca. 200 bar and 450 bar.

None of the sources reported any injury, only that ‘nearly nobody was injured’.
The explosion shock wave caused broken windows still in several kilometres distance and the bang was noticed at a linear distance of about 11 km and the damage mounted to 100,000 Reich Marks.

This incident triggered a stewise progress in safety engineering. The quality assurance program which was devised became the basis of the German pressure vessel code.
Since the invenstigation identified the cylinders material as the root cause, because unsuitable for operation with hydrogen, all comparable tanks in Germany were checked. Manufacturing rules were revised. The calculation method for the residual life time under cyclic stress was improved, with the most recent methodology. New test methods were developed to detect cracks in earlier stages.