Event
- Event ID
- 748
- Quality
- Description
- Employees were refilling a rack of 15 hydrogen cylinders that were connected together on a steel pallet with railings.
A leak developed at a valve and the pressurized hydrogen ignited. Operations activated a deluge sprinkler system, which turned off the compressor that was pumping in hydrogen.
The fire was contained by the sprinkler system as the hydrogen pressure bled off.
There were no injuries. - 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 (Generic)
- How was it involved?
- Leak & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Unknown
- Root causes
- Unknown (No additional details provided)
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen Stationary Storage
- Sub-application
- CGH2 cylinders
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- Hydrogen Transfer (No additional details provided)
- All components affected
- hydrogen cylinders, rack, compressor, sprinkler
- Location type
- Unknown
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
- A leak developed at a valve of a hydrogen cylinder during filling. It is assumed that this action was part of the normal operation.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
- A plausible, logic generic is the need of proper inspection and maintenance, and the regular improvement of the related procedure.
In similar accidents, one of the recommendations was the installation of control valve on each of the cylinders in the rack. However, in this case it seems that the accidents occurred when filling the cylinders, and the description does not clarify where he hydrogen feeding the fire was coming from: from the cylinders of form the compressor of from both?
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- Not reported
- Flame type
- Other
References
- Reference & weblink
OHSA report 0951510<br />
https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/establishment.inspection_detail?id=103880… />
(accessedOctober2020)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- OHSA
