Event
- Event ID
- 61
- Quality
- Description
- The driver of a liquid hydrogen tanker noticed a small plume at the rear of the track. He pulled off at the next exit and found that the manual vent valve was open due to road vibration. The valve was tightened and no further incident occurred during the remainder of the trip. Later it was determined that the valve did not have any problem.
- 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?
- Flange (Bolts)
- How was it involved?
- Leak & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Loss Of Tightness (Road Vibrations)
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- INITIAL CAUSE was the opening the manual vent valve due to vibration.
The ROOT CAUSE was probably a design which did not took into account the whole range of mechanical solicitations which the pressure control system of the tanker could experiment when travelling.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- valve
- Location type
- Open
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
- It is unknown if the tanker was full or empty.
The capacity is given in GCF (2005.2 GCF) , which possibly does not refer to the max load of a LH2 tanker, but to the hydrogen gas left in the tank before venting.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Environmental damage
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 32
- Property loss (offsite)
- 0
- Post-event summary
- No loss is reported
- Emergency action
- The event was noticed by a guard who was making the standard tour of the site early in the morning. It was still dark; therefore, the flame was visible. The guard reported the event to the site safety officer. No action was necessary, the flame quickly extinguished due to the limited amount of hydrogen in the storage.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount
- 0
- Presumed ignition source
- No ignition
References
- Reference & weblink
Event incident I-1991050589 of the PHMSA database (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, 1996),<br />
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages<br />
(accessed September 2024)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
