Skip to main content
Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Vehicle collision & fire at a metals processing company

Event

Event ID
1104
Quality
Description
A private car crashed against a hydrogen storage system at the gate of a company processing metals (Seveso plant).
The storage consisted in two bundles made of several bottles each, containing compressed hydrogen, located just after the entrance gate.
The car lost control and crashed against one of the two hydrogen bundles, causing hydrogen release, ignition and explosion followed by a fire. From the pictures, it was a fire engulfing the entire bundle.
It is unclear what the private car was doing there, because the driver was not an employee of the company. The road ends with the gate and road works were ongoing, so that normal traffic was forbidden.
The local fire brigade brought easily the fire under control and remained to cool the tanks of the other bundle, to prevent a possible escalation. Nothing is known on the amount hydrogen released, and the state of the storage after the fire.
Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
Hydrogen Release and Ignition
Nature of the consequences
Macro-region
Europe
Country
Belgium
Date
Main component involved?
Cgh2 Storage Vessel
How was it involved?
Rupture & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
Initiating cause
Impact, Rollover, Crash
Root causes
Root CAUSE analysis
INITIATING cause: loss of control of a vehicle and a crash against the hydrogen storage.

Root cause: the online news do not provide enough information to answer the following questions:
1. why was such a storage placed just behind the entrance gate, without protection against collision?
2. Why was the entrance gate open?
3. why a private car driven by somebody who as not part of the company could access the company ground, on a road not open to public?

Facility

Application
Steel And Metals Industry
Sub-application
generic metal processing
Hydrogen supply chain stage
All components affected
car, compressed hydrogen bundle
Location type
Open
Location description
Industrial Area
Operational condition
Unknown (No additional details provided)
Pre-event occurrences
The online news reports that (road) works were ongoing, and that the area was interdicted to traffic.
Bystander reported also that the car lost control before crashing.

Emergency & Consequences

Number of injured persons
1
Number of fatalities
0
Post-event summary
The driver was hurt in the crash, but was not anymore in the vehicle when the fire started.

Lesson Learnt

Lesson Learnt

The online news do not provide enough information to make conclusions. By analysis the event on the basis of the scarce visual data, it appears strange that two hydrogen pallets were ‘parked’ just behind the entrance gate, without protection against crash.

Event Nature

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Presumed ignition source
Not reported

References

Reference & weblink

JRC assessment