Event
- Event ID
- 456
- Quality
- Description
While travelling on a highway, the driver of a liquid hydrogen tanker noticed vapour coming from under the tank control cabinet. The driver stopped at rest stop and notified the home terminal, which dispatched mechanics to the scene. They found that the pipe of the relief valve was cracked. The tank was switched to alternate pressure safety system and transported for approximately 30 miles to the home terminal without further incident. The piping was repaired and all other trailers belonging to the same series were inspected for similar problem.
- 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
- joint/connection (valve)
- Failure mode
- rupture, no ignition
- Initiating cause
- loss of tightness (road vibrations)
- Root CAUSE analysis
The INITIAL CAUSE was the failure of the pipe connecting the tank to the pressure relief valve.
Since the failure was attributed to road vibration, the ROOT CAUSE is related to shortcoming in design.- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2019
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen transport and distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
pipe, PRV
- 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)
- 960
- Post-event summary
0.7 kg hydrogen were released.
- Emergency action
The tank was switched to alternate pressure safety system and transported for approximately 30 miles to the home terminal without further incident.
It is unclear what the PHMSA report means by 'altenate safety'. It is probably a sort cut term for the redundant second pressure safety system.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount (kg)
- 0.7
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
- Reference & weblink
Incident I-1995080699 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA:
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&PortalPath=%…
(accessed September 2024)
