Skip to main content
Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Leak on a LH2 tanker

Event

Event ID
1190
Quality
Description

Hydrogen leaked from a liquid hydrogen tank-trailer parked at a rest area of a highway.
The release was remarked as a plume of with vapour, plausibly caused by cold hydrogen release and vapour condensation.
Police, fire authorities, and Korea Gas Safety Corporation checked the amount of hydrogen leakage and the risk of explosion at the scene and mobilised the safety equipment required to complete the safe remove hydrogen from the tank, which happened in 6 hours.
There were no injuries or negative consequence to health. Nevertheless, dealing with the emergency caused severe congestion in the area. The rest area and a 13 km section of the highway were closed for more than three hours causing traffic chaos.

Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
Unignited Hydrogen Release
Nature of the consequences
leak no ignition
Macro-region
Asia
Country
South Korea
Date
Component involved
piping (weld)
Failure mode
rupture, no ignition
Initiating cause
material degradation (generic)
Root CAUSE analysis

The INITIATING CAUSE appears to be a leak at valve-pipe joint in the control cabinet at the rear of the tank.
The ROOT CAUSE is unknown

Root causes
Unknown
Date entry in HIAD
30/08/2025

Facility

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

valve, pipe

Process temperature range [C]
cryogenic temperature (below -50°C)
Process pressure range [MPa]
low to medium pressure (below 2 MPa)
Location type
Open
Location
highway or similar
Operational condition

Emergency & Consequences

Number of fatalities
0
Number of injured persons
0
Property loss (onsite)
0
Emergency action

The first responders emptied the leaking tank successfully.
The rest area and a 13 km section of the highway were closed for more than three hours causing traffic chaos.

Lesson Learnt

Lesson Learnt

There is not enough information to draw specific lesson n learnt, The only point deserving mentioning is that this incident confirm the general evidence that liquid hydrogen tank releases do not ignite often.

In-depth data

Release type
gas
Involved substances (% vol)
H2 100%
Probable IGNITION SOURCE

References

Sources categories
News
Reference & weblink