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Clean Hydrogen Partnership

Over pressurisation of a LH2 trailer

Event

Event ID
1115
Quality
Description

An LH2 trailer had just delivered hydrogen to a customer. The vehicle exited the plant, weighted the trailer parked to get the weight receipt. While in the building, a safety device activated due to excessive internal vessel pressure. The vented hydrogen vapour ignited (possibly by static electricity) resulting in a vent stack fire.
Plant emergency responders, carrier safety departments, and shipper safety department were contacted. The incident was terminated successful, but the source does not explain how. Very probably, they left the fire extinguishing by itself. The hydrogen left in the tank after delivery was not in a liquid state, it was vapour only.

The investigation revealed that the trailer had lost the vacuum guaranteeing thermal insulation from external heat to the LH2 tank, resulting in an increase of the vapour pressure. The safety device functioned properly and no significant quantity of product was dispersed.
This trailer was safely removed from the site and taken to a qualified repair facility for further evaluation and repairs.

Event Initiating system
Classification of the physical effects
Unignited Hydrogen Release
Nature of the consequences
leak no ignition
Macro-region
North America
Country
United States
Date
Component involved
PRD (generic)
Failure mode
rupture, no ignition
Initiating cause
over-pressurisation (thermal insulation degradation)
Root CAUSE analysis

The INITIAL CAUSE was over-pressurisation of the LH2 tank, which triggered a hydrogen venting.
The ROOT or INTERMEDIATE CAUSE was a loss of the thermal insulation capacity of the tank, due to deterioration of the vacuum between the external and internal shells of the LH2 tank.

Root causes
Date entry in HIAD
09/09/2024

Facility

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

vacuum thermal insulation

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
Pre-event occurrences

The trailer was empty, having just delivered hydrogen to a customer site. Only gaseous hydrogen, no LH2 was left.

Emergency & Consequences

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

A negligible amount of hydrogen was released.

Emergency action

The fire was probably left to extinguish itself, due to the limited amount of hydrogen left in the tank.

In-depth data

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

References

Sources categories
PHMSA
Reference & weblink

Incident I-2001080130 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA:
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&PortalPath=%…
(accessed September 2024)