Event
- Event ID
- 337
- Quality
- Description
- A gaseous tube trailer gone off road in a countryside area and landed on one side. All cylinders were loaded to a pressure of 200 bars.
The impact with the ground has caused the rupture of a high pressure valve of one of the cylinders positioned at the back part of the tube trailer. The interested cylinder was positioned in the low band in a central position. The rupture of the valve caused a considerable loss of hydrogen. - Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Unignited Hydrogen Release
- Nature of the consequences
- Leak No Ignition (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- Italy
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Valve (Generic)
- How was it involved?
- Rupture
- Initiating cause
- Impact, Rollover, Crash
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The loss of control and consequent drive-off caused damage to the high pressure valve of one of the hydrogen cylinders and it emptying.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- CGH2 tube trailer
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transport (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- Compressed hydrogen cylinders
- Location type
- Unknown
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Post-event summary
- The gaseous tube trailer has been transported to the producer site and the cylinders have been emptied.
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
- From the analysis of this accident the following emerged:
(1). Lack of the side protection to the bodies valve and pipes of connection among the containers. The rear of the trailer contains the whole hydraulic system (valves of intercept, manometers and collectors). The system was not protected efficiently in case of rear and side collisions.
(2). Lack of points for the lifting of the wagon during the phases of vehicle recovery. In case of roll-over or tipping, the final phase of the emergency consists in the recovery of the trailer-tractor. This is usually done mean of a crane. Without anchor points, the lifting and up-righting is a complex situation.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Actual pressure (MPa)
- 20
- Design pressure (MPa)
- 20
- Presumed ignition source
- No ignition
- Deflagration
- N
- High pressure explosion
- N
- High voltage explosion
- N
References
- Reference & weblink
Munaro et al., Hydrogen trasport safety: case of compressed<br />
Gaseous tube trailer, paper presented at Int. Conference on Hydrogen Safety ICHS 2005. <br />
http://conference.ing.unipi.it/ichs2005/Papers/230001.pdf <br />
(accessed June 2020)Also in H2TOOLS<br />
https://h2tools.org/lessons/hydrogen-tube-trailer-overturns-field<br />
(accessed oct 2025)<br />
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- Scientific article
