Event
- Event ID
- 1210
- Quality
- Description
- A mixture of hydrogen and diesel leaked and ignited on a desulphurisation unit of a refinery. The emergency plan was initiated few minutes later. The unit was shut down and the leak was stopped. Internal firefighters brought the fire under control within 30 minutes.
Black smoke was released into the atmosphere when the fire started, but the H2S detection beacons at the site boundary were not triggered and did not identify any toxicity. The extinguishing water was contained. - Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Fire (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- France
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Pipe
- How was it involved?
- Leak & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Hc-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Unknown
- Root causes
- Unknown (No additional details provided)
Facility
- Application
- Petrochemical Industry
- Sub-application
- Hydrodesulphurisation process
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- unknown
- Location type
- Open
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Environmental damage
- 0
- Post-event summary
- No injury, no environmental impact.
Property damages unknown.
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
The safety management of the plant worked as designed. In absence of technical details, it is impossible to extract a return of experience from this event.- Corrective Measures
A safety inspection performed by the authorities following the fire did not find any shortcomings or improvement needs.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas mixture
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2
diesel - Presumed ignition source
- Not reported
References
- Reference & weblink
Event no.62875 of the French database ARIA <br />
https://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/accident/27273/<br />
(accessed December 2024)Prefet de Bouche-Rone, Rapport de l'Inspection des installations classées, Visite d'inspection du 23/07/2024: <br />
https://georisques.gouv.fr/webappReport/ws/installations/inspection/ypL… />
(accessed September 2025)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- ARIA
