Event
- Event ID
- 481
- Quality
- Description
- A liquid hydrogen tanker was travelling to a customer when the driver noticed that hydrogen release was occurring at the trailer vent stack. The driver stopped the vehicle in a safe location and investigated the cause discovering that the vent valve had opened slightly. The driver could stop the venting by closing the valve tightly. The tanker could deliver at destination without further venting (total trip approximately 3 hours).
Back to the home terminal, an inspection found that a small amount of ice had most likely prevented full closure of the vent valve. This ice formation had occurred when equilibrating internal pressure before the start of the trip. When the ice melted during the travel, the vent opened slightly, resulting in a venting. - 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 (Generic)
- How was it involved?
- Rupture
- Initiating cause
- Ice Formation
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITIAL CAUSE a not tight manual vent valve.
The ROOT CAUSE was th formation of ice during prearation of the load for the trip. This ould hint at incomplete procedural guidelines.
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Transport And Distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transport (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- vent Valve
- Location type
- Open
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
- The LH2 tanker was full
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Environmental damage
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 100
- Property loss (offsite)
- 0
- Post-event summary
- 0.7 kg hydrogen were released.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount
- 0.7
- Presumed ignition source
- No ignition
References
- Reference & weblink
Incident I-1996110733 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA: <br />
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&PortalPath=%… />
(accessed September 2024)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
