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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Fire in a refinery

Event

Event ID
150
Quality
Description
A rupture of a tube in the furnace of an oil refinery caused it to loose 700 pounds of diesel and hydrogen resulting in a fire. The fire burned for a half hour with 30- to 40-foot (10 to 12 m) flames. No one was injured.
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?
Heat Exchanger (Pipe)
How was it involved?
Rupture & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Hc-Air Mixture
Initiating cause
Unknown
Root causes
Unknown (No additional details provided)
Root CAUSE analysis
Both INITIATING and ROOT CAUSES are unknown. Assuming that the 'tube in the furnace' was part of the fired-heater pre-heating the feedstock H2+diesel, the INITIATING CAUSE could be over-heating. But this is not confirmed by any evidence provided by the sources.

Facility

Application
Petrochemical Industry
Sub-application
Generic refinery process
Hydrogen supply chain stage
All components affected
pipe, furnace
Location type
Open
Location description
Industrial Area
Operational condition

Emergency & Consequences

Number of injured persons
0
Number of fatalities
0
Post-event summary
Nobody was injured, prperty losses unknown. 320 kg of a diesel-hydrogen mixture were released.
Emergency action
The cylinder valve was closed, stopping the flow.

Event Nature

Release type
Gas mixture
Involved substances (% vol)
H2,
diesel
Released amount
700 kg
Presumed ignition source
Not reported

References

Reference & weblink

Wikipedia lemma "List of natural gas and oil production accidents in the United States"<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:DownloadAsPdf&page=L… />
(accessed January 2025)

JRC assessment

Sources categories
Wikipedia