Skip to main content
Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Explosion during welding

Event

Event ID
19
Quality
Description

A welder was welding a stainless steel drain pipe with an arc welder, above a sulphuric acid storage tank. When he lowered the pipe, the hydrogen gas in tank ignited causing an explosion and one casualty

Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
Hydrogen Release and Ignition
Nature of the consequences
Macro-region
North America
Country
Canada
Date
Component involved
chemical storage tank (H2SO4)
Failure mode
internal explosion
Initiating cause
wrong operation
Root CAUSE analysis

The INITIATING CAUSE was the fire started by igniting hydrogen contained in a tank.
The source upon which his event is based, reported as ROOT CAUSES: management-failure, wrong-position, wrong-labelled.

Root causes
Date entry in HIAD
28/02/2009

Facility

Application
Unknown
Sub-application
unknown
Hydrogen supply chain stage
All components affected

suphuric acid tank

Process temperature range [C]
ambient temperature (-50°C to +50°C)
Location type
Unknown
Location
industrial area
Operational condition

Emergency & Consequences

Number of fatalities
1
Number of injured persons
0

In-depth data

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Release temperature [°C]
25
Probable IGNITION SOURCE
Explosion type

References

Sources categories
FACTS
Reference & weblink

Source unvailable