Event
- Event ID
- 139
- Quality
- Description
- The incident occurred when delivering liquid hydrogen to a stationary storage system of a semiconductor plant. Cold gaseous hydrogen was vented for unknown reason, ignited and created a plume of flames several metres high. The fire receded within seconds, leaving the truck with little damage and its driver unharmed.
The first notification of the ignition was given by the plant personnel. The driver sealed off the vent within seconds and stopped the leak. - Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Fire (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Valve (Cryogenic)
- How was it involved?
- Rupture & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Unknown
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITATING and the ROOT CAUSES are of difficult identification, because the cause of the leak is not reported, and the source for the ignition remained unknown.
It can be assumed that a material failure at one of the trailer-to-stationary storage connections was at the origin of the leak.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transfer (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- connection, hose
- Location type
- Open
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Property loss (onsite)
- low
- Post-event summary
- No damage to the tanker and the stationary storage.
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
The safety equipment in place and the timely action of the truck driver prevented the fire from spreading into the tanks.
The lack of details on the specific location of the leak and the specific actions taken by the driver to isolate the leak do not allow for a more in-depth analysis.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- Not reported
- Deflagration
- N
- High pressure explosion
- N
- High voltage explosion
- N
References
- Reference & weblink
Events in database H2TOOLS<br />
https://h2tools.org/lessons/liquid-hydrogen-delivery-truck-fire<br />
(accessed December 2024)Original source in HIAD Hydrogen Now, Dec 17, <br />
http://www.hydrogennow.org/HNews/Archive/news2004.html
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- H2TOOLS
