Event
- Event ID
- 422
- Quality
- Description
- The incident happened during a liquid hydrogen delivery at a customer site. When the drivers were pressurising the tanker preparing for hydrogen transfer, the safety relief system rupture disc failed prematurely. The released gaseous hydrogen ignited.
The drivers quickly activated the vent system fire abatement system and extinguished the flame and allowed the venting pressure to reduce. When the pressure was stabilised, they switched the pressure control system to the secondary pressure relief system and continued their product delivery without any further incident. The primary rupture disc was replaced upon return to the home terminal. - Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Fire (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Prd (Burst Disc)
- How was it involved?
- Premature Activation
- Initiating cause
- Unknown
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITIAL was an a premature burst of the pressure relief burst disc.
The drivers were able to mitigate consequences by following the procedure for these cases. They were clearly well trained and the procedure was effective.
It unknown if the burst disc was damages, aged, wrongly installed or of the wrong materials.
Therefore is the ROOT CAUSE unknown.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transfer (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- burst disc
- Location type
- Open
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Environmental damage
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 400
- Property loss (offsite)
- 0
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount
- 3.3
- Design pressure (MPa)
- 0.42
- Presumed ignition source
- Not reported
References
- Reference & weblink
Incident I-1996110731 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