Hydrogen release at a public hydrogen refuelling station.

A leak occurred at a compressor of a hydrogen refuelling station, Rescue services were alerted and the station's activity is interrupted. The leak was stopped by closing valves.

The station had a storage system consisting of ten cryogenic tanks for a total of 6,000 litres of liquid hydrogen.The filling of FCEV was occurring via a high-pressure hydrogen tank fed by a compressor bringing the 4 bar hydrogen from the liquid hydrogen storage tanks up to the 380 bar.
Just before the leak, a vehicle fill had depleted the compressed hydrogen tank. Therefore, the compressor turned on to refill the storage. After running about 2 hours, a crankshaft bearing started to fail. This allowed greater movement of the shaft, which led to a shaft seal leaking hydrogen. The compressor shut down on low suction pressure and then the system was shut down using the e-stop by the emergency responders.

INITIATING cause was a deterioration of a component of a hydrogen compressor.

hydrogen refuelling station, liquid hydrogen storage, hydrogen compressor, bearing

A vehicle had just refuelled, causing the need to top up the high pressure storage tank.

No consequence.

According to the H2Tools report (see references), the corrective action consisted in adding a gas detector in close proximity to the compressor shaft. Preventing measure to predict bearing failure were also considered, such as a vibration switch.

In addition, the manufacturer was contacted and the bearing design analysed for possible improvements).