Event
- Event ID
- 419
- Quality
- Description
A compressed hydrogen tube trailer-truck was returning to the home terminal after having delivered the gas to a customer. The driver lost control of the truck, while attempting to avoid a collision with another vehicle. The truck went into a ditch and overturn. The impact damaged the manifold and the valves resulting in hydrogen release and ignition. The fire engulfed also the truck cabin.
- 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
- valve (generic)
- Failure mode
- rupture & ignition
- Initiating cause
- impact, rollover, crash
- Root CAUSE analysis
The INITIATING and ROOT CAUSE is reported as a human error, due to the excessive speed of the tanker
- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2017
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen transport and distribution
- Sub-application
- CGH2 tube trailer
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
safety valves
- 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
- Pre-event occurrences
The tanker had already delivered the hydrogen, and was very containing only rest gas. The quantity provided by the PHMSA report could indicate the total hydrogen amount left in the trailer before the crash.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 1
- Official legal action
The driver burned his hands when trying to exit the cabin in fire.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount (kg)
- 24
- Release temperature [°C]
- 25
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
- Reference & weblink
Incident I-1984010081 of the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration PHMSA:
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages&PortalPath=%…
(accessed September 2024)
