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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Hydrogen tank explosion at a power plant

Event

Event ID
1098
Quality
Description
Hydrogen caused an explosion at a power plant, killing two people and injuring 13 others. The station was subsequently shut down. The cause of the explosion was not reported. At first, sources reported that the incident occurred in hydrogen generation unit, later it was reported that it occurred at a hydrogen storage tank, located in a separate part of the power station and unrelated with the generator.
Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
Hydrogen Release and Ignition
Nature of the consequences
Macro-region
Europe
Date
Main component involved?
Cgh2 Vessel (Stationary)
How was it involved?
Explosion (H2-Air Mixture)
Initiating cause
Unknown
Root causes
Unknown (No additional details provided)
Root CAUSE analysis
The sources of this event claimed tentatively various causes, from lack of safety supervision to unsafe working procedures to procedural non-compliance up to contaminated hydrogen (?). None of these claims seems based on convincing evidences.

Facility

Application
Power Plant
Sub-application
coal-fired power plant
Hydrogen supply chain stage
Hydrogen Storage (No additional details provided)
All components affected
unknown
Location type
Unknown
Location description
Industrial Area
Operational condition
Description of the facility/unit/process/substances
The power plant covered a considerable part of the electricity needs of Kosovo.

Emergency & Consequences

Number of injured persons
13
Number of fatalities
2
Environmental damage
0
Post-event summary
The power plant was closedfor a long time, and only partially re-opened.

Event Nature

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Presumed ignition source
Not reported

References

Reference & weblink

Gulf Time news of June 06, 2014:<br />
https://www.gulf-times.com/story/395189/two-killed-in-kosovo-power-plan… />
(accessed 2023)

RTE news of May 22, 2014:<br />
https://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0606/622005-kosovo/<br />
(Accessed December 2023)

Wikipedia page dedicated to the plant, mentions the incident:<br />
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_A_Power_Station<br />
(accessed December 2023)

JRC assessment