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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Fire from a LH2 tanker

Event

Event ID
974
Quality
Description

The truck was delivering hydrogen to a steel products plant. It contained approximately 8500 gallon of liquid hydrogen. The operation of transfer to the customer tank had just terminated. The fire started at the tanker vent stack during post-delivery venting.
The emergency services were called - fire engines from two stations attended. The facility and the neighbourhood, including local schools and businesses were evacuated as a precautionary measure.
The fire was limited to the tanker vent stack.
The hazardous material incident team personnel closed the vent valve the 2.5 hours later.

The emergency services closed the traffic and evacuated several businesses, schools and homes for a few hours.

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
valve (vent)
Failure mode
rupture & ignition
Initiating cause
unknown
Root CAUSE analysis

According to preliminary findings, the INITIATING CAUSE was the failure of a valve. The ignition of the hydrogen may have been caused, of facilitated by a lack of proper grounding, through static build-up.
The investigation to determine the ROOT CAUSE was not yet terminated at the moment the source issued this event.

Root causes
Unknown
Date entry in HIAD
01/01/2024

Facility

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

vent 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
industrial area
Operational condition

Emergency & Consequences

Number of fatalities
0
Number of injured persons
0
Currency
US$
Property loss (onsite)
47.000
Post-event summary

There was no release of hazardous materials due consumption by fire.
There were no reported injuries or damage to property.
The rear of the tanker did incurred some minor fire damage.

Emergency action

The emergency services were and fire engines from two stations attended. The facility and the neighbourhood, including local schools and businesses were evacuated as a precautionary measure.
Although the sources do no report the tactics adopted by the fire-fighting teams, a news picture shows a water jet directed to the place of the fire.
The hazardous material incident team personnel closed the vent valve and the 2.5 hours later.

The tanker was inspected by the emergency response teams, declared safe and released to the owner which transported it back to its premises.
After that, it was inspected by a 3rd party vendor.

Lesson Learnt

Lesson Learnt

A picture provided by local news shows that the emergency teams fought the fire by means of a water jet directed to the tank vent.
It is in general not advised to use water to stop a fire on a cryogenic tank. The action can cause freezing of the water and the blocking of the pressure relief venting, with consequent building up of the pressure inside the tank and possible catastrophic failure of the entire tank. In this case, however, the LH2 had already been transferred and it could be assumed that the little hydrogen left in the taker was already evaporated or in the process to do so, with negligible potential for a major pressure increase.

In-depth data

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Released amount (kg)
597.74659348978
Release pressure [MPa]
1
Probable IGNITION SOURCE
Explosion type
Fireball

References

Sources categories
PHMSA
Reference & weblink

Incident I-2018100122 and I-201810012 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA:
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&PortalPath=%…
(accessed September 2024)

Metroforensics news of August 29, 2018
https://metroforensics.blogspot.com/2018_08_30_archive.html
(accessed November 2020)

Hard Working Trucks news of August 29, 2018
(accessed November 2020)
https://www.hardworkingtrucks.com/explosion-during-hydrogen-tanker-truc…