Event
- Event ID
- 61
- Quality
- Description
The driver of a liquid hydrogen tanker noticed a small plume at the rear of the track. He pulled off at the next exit and found that the manual vent valve was open due to road vibration. The valve was tightened and no further incident occurred during the remainder of the trip. Later it was determined that the valve did not have any problem.
- 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
- flange (bolts)
- Failure mode
- leak, no ignition
- Initiating cause
- loss of tightness (road vibrations)
- Root CAUSE analysis
INITIAL CAUSE was the opening the manual vent valve due to vibration.
The ROOT CAUSE was probably a design which did not took into account the whole range of mechanical solicitations which the pressure control system of the tanker could experiment when travelling.- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 31/12/2024
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen transport and distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
valve
- 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
It is unknown if the tanker was full or empty.
The capacity is given in GCF (2005.2 GCF) , which possibly does not refer to the max load of a LH2 tanker, but to the hydrogen gas left in the tank before venting.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Currency
- US$
- Property loss (onsite)
- 32
- Post-event summary
No loss is reported
- Emergency action
The driver closed the valve.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Released amount (kg)
- 0
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- PHMSA
- Reference & weblink
Event incident I-1991050589 of the PHMSA database (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, 1996),
https://portal.phmsa.dot.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Portalpages
(accessed September 2024)
