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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Roll-over of a liquid hydrogen tanker

Event

Event ID
141
Quality
Description

A tanker carrying 11500 gallon of liquid hydrogen was travelling on a highway, when it was involved in a collision with a private vehicle. The tanker overturned.
The impact and the unsuccessful attempt of the driver to avoid the impact caused the tractor steering wheel to spin in the driver's hands. The private car hit twice the tractor, and the vehicles came to rest about 40 feet apart. The tractor was nearly at rest when the liquid in the tank trailer shifted causing the tractor-trailer unit to rollover on the passenger side.
No injuries to the driver and his passenger, the driver of the automobile and the passenger had minor injuries but did not go to the hospital.
There was no loss or release of product from the trailer.

Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
No Hydrogen Release
Nature of the consequences
Macro-region
North America
Country
United States
Date
Component involved
LH2 tank (road tanker)
Failure mode
damage, no release
Initiating cause
impact, rollover, crash
Root CAUSE analysis

The INITIATING cause was a traffic accident,
The ROOT CAUSE was the loss of control of the second vehicle.
The fact that the trailer, despite the roll over, did not experienced any hydrogen loss, shows that the safety systems in place worked according to design.

Root causes
Date entry in HIAD
01/12/2024

Facility

Application
Hydrogen transport and distribution
Sub-application
LH2 tanker
Hydrogen supply chain stage
All components affected

none

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

Emergency & Consequences

Number of fatalities
0
Number of injured persons
0
Currency
US$
Property loss (onsite)
80.723
Post-event summary

No injuries to the driver and his passenger, the driver of the automobile and her passenger had minor injuries but did not go to the hospital.
There was no loss or release of product from the tanker.
The costs indicated were probably related to the damage from the crash.

Emergency action

Unknown. Probably an emergency team of the company inspected the tanker before declaring it safe for up-righting it.

Lesson Learnt

Lesson Learnt

The fact that the trailer, despite the roll over, did not experienced any hydrogen loss, shows that the safety systems in place worked according to design.

In-depth data

Release type
no release
Released amount (kg)
0
Probable IGNITION SOURCE

References

Sources categories
PHMSA
Reference & weblink

Incident I-1999100714 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA:
https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/data-and-statistics/pipeline/distribution-tra…
(accessed September 2024)