Event
- Event ID
- 556
- Quality
- Description
- A fire and a series of explosions occurred on a petrochemical plant, causing damage to process vessels, containment walls and process utility piping. It is believed that lightning struck a two story tall compressed hydrogen tank, which failed causing extensive property damage. It caused as well the explosion in an aluminium alkyls distillation vessel.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Fire Followed By An Explosion (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Cgh2 Storage Vessel
- How was it involved?
- Rupture & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Extreme Environmental Conditions (Lightning)
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITATING CAUSE was lightning striking a hydrogen tank.
Despite the fact that the tank was electrically grounded and avaiability of overpressure-preventing measures such as pressure relief valves, the tank failed.
The ROOT CAUSE cannot be identified. Nevertheless, something went wrong when design the lightning protection in relation to the lifetime degradation of the tank.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Stationary Storage
- Sub-application
- unspecified
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Storage (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- Tank
- Location type
- Unknown
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
- A lightning is believed to be at the start of the series of events.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- Weather - lightning
References
- Reference & weblink
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, JULY, 12, 1982.
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- News
