Event
- Event ID
- 77
- Quality
- Description
A liquid hydrogen tanker was driving on a highway, when the driver noticed a vapour plume in his mirror. Driver stopped and found a small amount of vapour coming from the vapour recovery line, which was slightly open. The driver closed the valve tightly and the vapour plume ceased.
The valve had opened slightly due road vibration. Since the check at company repair facility did not reveal any problem, the tanker was put back in services.- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Unignited Hydrogen Release
- Nature of the consequences
- leak no ignition
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Component involved
- flange (bolts)
- Failure mode
- rupture, no ignition
- Initiating cause
- loss of tightness (road vibrations)
- Root CAUSE analysis
INITIAL CAUSE was the opening the vapour recovery valve due to vibration.
The ROOT CAUSE was a design which did not took into account the whole range of mechanical solicitations which the pressure control system of the trailer could experiment when travelling.- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 31/12/2024
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen transport and distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
vapour recovery valve
- Process temperature range [C]
- cryogenic temperature (below -50°C)
- Process pressure range [MPa]
- low to medium pressure (below 2 MPa)
- Location type
- Open
- Location
- highway or similar
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
It is unknown if the tanker was full or empty.
The capacity is given in GCF (2005.2 GCF) , which possibly does not refer to the max load of a LH2 tanker, but to the hydrogen gas left in the tank before venting.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 1
- Post-event summary
A loss of 100 GCF is reported, which probably corresponds to 0.3 kg
- Emergency action
The driver closed tighter the valve.
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
This incident is very similar to other, such as the HIAD_070, which attributed to road vibrations the opening of the vapour return valve.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
- Reference & weblink
Event incident ID I-1991090457 of the PHMSA database (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, 1996),
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages
(accessed September 2024)
