Event
- Event ID
- 82
- Quality
- Description
- The incident occurred while delivering seven compressed hydrogen cylinders to a customer site.
The store employee had already removed four cylinders from the delivery truck and carried them upright about 2 meters away. When he let them go, a "bang" sound was heard near the valve and the containers burst into flames, injuring the employee. The containers continued to burn until the gas was completely released. - Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Fire (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- Asia
- Country
- Japan
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Valve (Generic)
- How was it involved?
- Rupture & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Material Degradation (Generic)
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITIATING CAUSE was the sudden failure of (one of the) valves mounted on CGH2 cylinders.
According to the KHK report, the ROOT CAUSE was an inspection failure.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- CGH2 cylinders truck
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transfer (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- cylinder, valve
- Location type
- Unknown
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 1
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Post-event summary
- Minor injury
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
The only possible general conclusion which can be drawn from this incident is that at the time of its occurrence (years 60’s) the safety provisions required for the transport of high pressure cylinders were not yet well developed.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- Static electricity
References
- Reference & weblink
High Pressure Gas Accident Cases Database of the KHK (High Pressure Gas Safety Association): <br />
https://www.khk.or.jp/public_information/incident_investigation/hpg_inc… />
(accessed May 2025)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- KHK
