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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Fire in a refinery

Event

Event ID
150
Quality
Description

A rupture of a tube in the furnace of an oil refinery caused it to loose 700 pounds of diesel and hydrogen resulting in a fire. The fire burned for a half hour with 30- to 40-foot (10 to 12 m) flames. No one was injured.

Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
Hydrogen Release and Ignition
Nature of the consequences
fire
Macro-region
North America
Country
United States
Date
Component involved
heat exchanger (pipe)
Failure mode
rupture & ignition
Initiating cause
unknown
Root CAUSE analysis

Both INITIATING and ROOT CAUSES are unknown. Assuming that the 'tube in the furnace' was part of the fired-heater pre-heating the feedstock H2+diesel, the INITIATING CAUSE could be over-heating. But this is not confirmed by any evidence provided by the sources.

Root causes
Unknown
Date entry in HIAD
28/02/2009

Facility

Application
Petrochemical industry
Sub-application
Unspecified refinery process
Hydrogen supply chain stage
All components affected

pipe, furnace

Location type
Open
Location
industrial area
Operational condition

Emergency & Consequences

Number of fatalities
0
Number of injured persons
0
Post-event summary

Nobody was injured, prperty losses unknown. 320 kg of a diesel-hydrogen mixture were released.

In-depth data

Release type
Gas mixture
Involved substances (% vol)
H2,
diesel
Released amount (kg)
700
Probable IGNITION SOURCE

References

Sources categories
Wikipedia
Reference & weblink

Wikipedia lemma "List of natural gas and oil production accidents in the United States"
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:DownloadAsPdf&page=L…
(accessed January 2025)

DeseretNews
(accessed Jan 2025, link lost)