Event
- Event ID
- 870
- Quality
- Description
A lorry crashed into a hydrogen tube trailer with considerable speed on the highway A1 near Cologne.
The lorry driver was killed.
Gas escaped from tubes and valves of three of the nine tanks and was ignited.
The fire brigade let the gas burn and cooled the undamaged tanks. Other vehicles or persons were not involved.- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- fire
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- Germany
- Date
- Component involved
- valve (generic)
- Failure mode
- rupture & ignition
- Initiating cause
- impact, rollover, crash
- Root CAUSE analysis
INITIATING cause of the hydrogen release was the crash into the hydrogen transporter.
In absence of information on driver, the ROOT CAUSE is attributed generically to a human error (wrong manoeuvre).
Nothing is said on the crashworthiness of the transporter.- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2020
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen transport and distribution
- Sub-application
- CGH2 tube trailer
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
truck transporting hydrogen, highway
- Process temperature range [C]
- ambient temperature (-50°C to +50°C)
- Process pressure range [MPa]
- medium to high pressure (10 to 50 MPa)
- Location type
- Open
- Location
- highway or similar
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 1
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Post-event summary
The driver of the lorry was killed, by the crash not by the hydrogen release.
- Emergency action
The fire brigade let the gas burn and cooled the undamaged tanks. Other vehicles or persons were not involved.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Release temperature [°C]
- 25
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- News
- Reference & weblink
Mirror 2/2001
News of the German Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Association (DWV)
https://www.dwv-info.de/wasserstoff-spiegel/#1456498279633-abb860ba-5efb
(accessed July 2020)
