Event
- Event ID
- 1145
- Quality
- Description
- A driver found a small audible leak coming from the rear of the trailer compartment, while conducting in-trip visual walk-around inspection at a roadside. The driver set up perimeter around trailer using triangles and safety cones, contacted the trailer company to notify the leak and contacted local police department to inform of the situation. The company experts inspected found a leak coming from the neck valve threads one of the ten tubes. They decided to vent to atmosphere the hydrogen contained in that tube, connecting a portable vent stack. After having disabled the leaking valve, the trailer returned to facility for inspection and repair.
- 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?
- Joint/Connection (Threaded)
- How was it involved?
- Leak & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Material Degradation (Generic)
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITIATING CAUSE was probably the loosening of a threaded connection of a valve. A possible technical explanation could be road vibrations, but other material ageing/degradation reasons cannot be excluded.
The ROOT CAUSE is not provided, however, an effective design should be able to take into account road vibrations on a road vehicle.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- CGH2 tube trailer
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transport (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- Threaded Connection
- Location type
- Open
- Operational condition
- Description of the facility/unit/process/substances
- DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIT
The trailer consisted of 10 tubes. The PHMSA source provides a value of released hydrogen of 11000 GCF (28 kg), which corresponds to the content of one tube. This results slightly lower than the nominal capacity of these tube, declared as 12500 GCF (318 kg)
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Environmental damage
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 0
- Property loss (offsite)
- 0
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
The mitigating measures worked well: (i) the regular inspection by drivers along the route, and (ii) the emergency handling by depressurising the leaking tube and releasing its content to the atmosphere.
The loosening of threaded connection due to road vibration is a common glitch. It is however unclear, in this event and similar event, how this could be avoided. Is the root cause related shortcoming when installing / maintaining the connections, or to unexpected road conditions during travel?
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount
- 28
- Design pressure (MPa)
- 17.4
- Presumed ignition source
- No ignition
References
- Reference & weblink
Incident I-2015090569 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