Skip to main content
Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Explosion in testing equipment

Event

Event ID
393
Quality
Description

During a test in which GH2 was driving gas, an explosion occurred in the test section. The drive chamber was over-pressurized to 3500 psi (240 bar).
The test section failed; windows designed for a lower pressure release failed and the walls, which were covered with wall board, ignited causing more damage.

Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
Hydrogen Release and Ignition
Nature of the consequences
Macro-region
North America
Country
United States
Date
-
Component involved
reactor / oven / furnace / test chamber
Failure mode
internal explosion
Initiating cause
over-pressurisation
Root CAUSE analysis

Window in test section failed due to excessive pressures. A higher pressure was obtained than calculated due to choked flow conditions in the tube.

Root causes
Date entry in HIAD
01/11/2025

Facility

Application
Laboratory / R&D
Sub-application
auronautics
Hydrogen supply chain stage
All components affected

unknown

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
Confined
Location
countryside or desert
Operational condition
Description of the facility/unit/process/substances

EXPLANATION OF 'CHOCKED FLOW'
Choked flow is a condition in which the flow rate of a fluid becomes constant, regardless of any further increase in the pressure drop across a restriction.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choked_flow]
"Choked flow is a compressible flow effect. The parameter that becomes "choked" or "limited" is the fluid velocity.
Choked flow is a fluid dynamic condition associated with the Venturi effect. When a flowing fluid at a given pressure and temperature passes through a constriction (such as the throat of a convergent-divergent nozzle or a valve in a pipe) into a lower pressure environment the fluid velocity increases. At initially subsonic upstream conditions, the conservation of energy principle requires the fluid velocity to increase as it flows through the smaller cross-sectional area of the constriction. At the same time, the Venturi effect causes the static pressure, and therefore the density, to decrease at the constriction. Choked flow is a limiting condition where the mass flow cannot increase with a further decrease in the downstream pressure environment for a fixed upstream pressure and temperature."

Emergency & Consequences

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

test equipment destroied and building damaged

In-depth data

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Release temperature [°C]
25
Release pressure [MPa]
<24
Probable IGNITION SOURCE
Explosion type

References

Sources categories
ORDIN
Reference & weblink

Mishap no 55 in
P. L. Ordin, Review of hydrogen accidents and incidents in NASA operations, 1974, NASA TM X-71565
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19740020344

Hankinson and Lowesmith, Qualitative Risk Assessment of Hydrogen Liquefaction, Storage and Transportation, FCH JU project IDEALHY, Deliverable 3.10 (2013)
confidential
(accessed October 2025)

Lowesmith et al., Safety issues of the liquefaction, storage and transportation of liquid hydrogen: An analysis of incidents and HAZIDS, Int. J. Hydrogen energy (2014) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2014.08.002