Event
- Event ID
- 422
- Quality
- Description
The incident happened during a liquid hydrogen delivery at a customer site. When the drivers were pressurising the tanker preparing for hydrogen transfer, the safety relief system rupture disc failed prematurely. The released gaseous hydrogen ignited.
The drivers quickly activated the vent system fire abatement system and extinguished the flame and allowed the venting pressure to reduce. When the pressure was stabilised, they switched the pressure control system to the secondary pressure relief system and continued their product delivery without any further incident. The primary rupture disc was replaced upon return to the home terminal.- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- fire
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Component involved
- PRD (burst disc)
- Failure mode
- premature activation & venting
- Initiating cause
- unknown
- Root CAUSE analysis
The INITIAL was an a premature burst of the pressure relief burst disc.
The drivers were able to mitigate consequences by following the procedure for these cases. They were clearly well trained and the procedure was effective.
It unknown if the burst disc was damages, aged, wrongly installed or of the wrong materials.
Therefore is the ROOT CAUSE unknown.- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2017
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen transport and distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
burst disc
- Process temperature range [C]
- cryogenic temperature (below -50°C)
- Process pressure range [MPa]
- low to medium pressure (below 2 MPa)
- Location type
- Open
- Location
- industrial area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 400
- Emergency action
The drivers
(a) activated the vent system fire abatement system and extinguished the flame
(b) allowed the venting pressure to reduce.
(c) switched the pressure control system to the secondary pressure relief system
(d) continued their product delivery without any further incident.
The primary rupture disc was replaced upon return to the home terminal.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount (kg)
- 3.3
- Release pressure [MPa]
- 0.42
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
- Reference & weblink
Incident I-1996110731 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA:
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&PortalPath=%…
(accessed September 2024)
