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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Fire on a bus while refuelling

Event

Event ID
1087
Quality
Description

The fire developed on a hydrogen bus during filling, and was detected due to the development of smoke and a smell of burned materials.
The power cable of the fuel cells system had overheated.

Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
No Hydrogen Release
Nature of the consequences
Macro-region
Europe
Country
France
Date
Component involved
FCEV bus
Failure mode
fire (generic)
Initiating cause
conventional component failure (electricity, power)
Root CAUSE analysis

The INITIATING cause was the overheating of an electrical cable during refuelling.
Two possible causes were proposed:
(1) the cable had been wrongly installed or fixed, or
(2) the electrical system had caused too high current in the cable.

Root causes
Date entry in HIAD
01/07/2024

Facility

Application
Road vehicles
Sub-application
FCEV-bus
Hydrogen supply chain stage
All components affected

power cable

Process temperature range [C]
ambient temperature (-50°C to +50°C)
Location type
Confined
Location
unknown
Operational condition
Pre-event occurrences

It happened during refuelling

Emergency & Consequences

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

Nobody was in the proximity of the bus.
20 days of operation were lost.

Lesson Learnt

Corrective Measures

(a) To ship the affected component to the headquarter for inspection
(b) To replacement of the affected component with a new one.
(c) To perform an inspection of the system on all the other buses in function.

In-depth data

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Release temperature [°C]
25
Probable IGNITION SOURCE

References

Sources categories
Investigation report
Reference & weblink

Provided to JRC by the operator of the facility (confidential)