Event
- Event ID
- 556
- Quality
- Description
A fire and a series of explosions occurred on a petrochemical plant, causing damage to process vessels, containment walls and process utility piping. It is believed that lightning struck a two story tall compressed hydrogen tank, which failed causing extensive property damage. It caused as well the explosion in an aluminium alkyls distillation vessel.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- fire followed by an explosion
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Component involved
- CGH2 tank (stationary)
- Failure mode
- rupture & ignition
- Initiating cause
- extreme environmental conditions (lightning)
- Root CAUSE analysis
The INITIATING CAUSE was lightning striking a hydrogen tank.
Despite the fact that the tank was electrically grounded and availability of overpressure-preventing measures such as pressure relief valves, the tank failed.The ROOT CAUSE cannot be identified. Nevertheless, something went wrong when design the lightning protection in relation to the lifetime degradation of the tank.
- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2020
Facility
- Application
- Petrochemical industry
- Sub-application
- Unspecified refinery process
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
Tank
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location
- unknown
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
A lightning is believed to be at the start of the series of events.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- unknown
- Number of injured persons
- unknown
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- News
- Reference & weblink
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, JULY, 12, 1982.
