Event
- Event ID
- 1120
- Quality
- Description
- A LH2 trailer had just delivered hydrogen to a customer and was travelling on a highway returning to the base, when the driver noticed that the pressure inside the tank was increasing rapidly.
The driver stopped at a rest stop to report incident. Local fire-fighters departments and the trailer company responded. The fire-fighters evacuated the rest stop area. Meanwhile, the trailer was venting hydrogen and reducing the internal pressure with no further problems. The cause appeared to be a mechanical problem, possibly a loss of vacuum on the vessel. - Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Unignited Hydrogen Release
- Nature of the consequences
- Leak No Ignition (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Prd
- How was it involved?
- Correct Activation
- Initiating cause
- Over-Pressurisation (Thermal Insulation Degradation)
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITIAL CAUSE was over-pressurisation of the LH2 tank, which triggered a hydrogen venting.
The ROOT CAUSE was probably due to a loss of the thermal insulation capacity of the tank, due to some mechanical events which partially disrupted the annular vacuum between the external and internal shells of the LH2 tank.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transport (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- vacuum thermal insulation
- Location type
- Open
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
- The driver had terminated the delivery of LH2 to a customer's site. It can be assumed that the trailer was (almost) empty.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Environmental damage
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 0
- Property loss (offsite)
- 0
- Post-event summary
- None
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- No ignition
References
- Reference & weblink
Incident I-2004061465 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA: <br />
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&PortalPath=%… />
(accessed September 2024)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
