Event
- Event ID
- 615
- Quality
- Description
- A crack occurred in a storage tank (300 kg of hydrogen) releasing gaseous hydrogen to atmosphere. The vapour cloud exploded with an apparent centre of explosion 9 m above ground, and a energy equivalent to 9 to 18 kg of TNT.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- 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
- Unknown
- Root causes
- Unknown (No additional details provided)
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITIATING cause of the release has been the cracking of the tank. Nothing is known on the cracking cause. It could be maintenance and inspection failure, or design failure in the case of hydrogen metal attack.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Production
- Sub-application
- storage tank
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Storage (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- storage tank
- Location type
- Unknown
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 4600000
- Post-event summary
- The consequences were 4.6 million of dollars of damage and 6 month of down time.
According to Lenoir et al (see reference) The vapour cloud exploded with an apparent centre of explosion 9 m above ground , and an energy equivalent to 9 to 18 kg of TNT.
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
- The event description does not provide enough information to deduce a .
Some general conclusions on the physical phenomena underlying the explosion have been suggested by E. Oran 2020 (see references).
They assessed this and similar hydrogen explosions as "...air blasts in turbulent clouds ignited very soon after release from containment."
"...there is no doubt that these were intense VPE's. It seems that the natural buoyancy of these gases does not favour the development of sufficiently large flammable clouds in open space. "
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount
- 300 kg
- Presumed ignition source
- Not reported
- Deflagration
- Y
References
- Reference & weblink
Extract from Leonoir and Davenport, Survey of Vapor Cloud Explosions: Second Update, Process Safety Progress, 12 (1993) 12-33.
Leonoir and Davenport, Survey of Vapor Cloud Explosions: Second Update, Process Safety Progress, 12 (1993) 12-33.
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- Scientific article
