Event
- Event ID
- 73
- Quality
- Description
- While on a highway, the driver of a liquid hydrogen tanker was notified that vapour was coming out of the back of the trailer. The driver pulled into a safe haven to investigate. After opening the rear cabinet doors, the driver noticed the liquid hydrogen was leaking by the fire control and manual valve for the fill and withdrawal valve. The product was slowly dripping down onto the cabinet floor and vaporising.
The driver could see no visible cause for the product passing through the valves as they were tight. There was no other choice than safely venting the product to the atmosphere. The tanker returned to the home terminal for evaluation.
It was found that the fire control valve failed to close completely due to a piece of ice partially blocking the valve seat. Once that the ice was removed, the valve worked properly. The tanker was returned to service. - 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?
- Valve (Fill)
- How was it involved?
- Leak & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Ice Formation
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITIATING CAUSE of the liquid hydrogen spilling was the block of a valve in partially open position due to ice formation.
The ROOT CAUSE was probably related to the failing to perform properly the procedure at the moment of the filling of the tanker.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transport (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- fill & withdrawal valve,
fire control valve - Location type
- Open
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Environmental damage
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 170
- Property loss (offsite)
- 0
- Post-event summary
- The source report only a partial loss of the hydrogen content.
Event Nature
- Release type
- liquid
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- No ignition
References
- Reference & weblink
Event incident ID I-1992020141 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
