Summary report of the Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking Expert Workshop on the Environmental Impacts of Hydrogen

The adoption of hydrogen (H²) as a clean, zero-carbon renewable energy source promises a global revolution, eliminating harmful emissions responsible for climate change. This white paper explores the opportunities and implications of an emerging hydrogen society. MSA Safety examines workplace safety risks and challenges posed when producing, handling, transporting, and storing alongside suggested best practices, safety measures, and detection technologies.

An under-expanded hydrogen jet from high-pressure equipment or storage tank is a potential incident scenario. Experiments demonstrated that the delayed ignition of a highly turbulent under-expanded hydrogen jet generates a blast wave able to harm people and damage property. There is a need for engineering tools to predict the pressure effects during such incidents to define hazard distances. The similitude analysis is applied to build a correlation using available experimental data.

Contents 1 Climate Change Policy Objective 2 Hydrogen Flexibility 3 Hydrogen Production and Sources4 Hydrogen Properties5 Hydrogen Safety Codes and Standards Overview6 UK Hydrogen Blending Demo Approval7 US Hydrogen Blending Concept8 Pipeline Integrity9 Gas Composition Standards10 Pipeline Standards11 Hydrogen Safety Utilization 12 Conclusion 

This document applies to the recovery phase of a typical emergency management framework that includes planning, response, mitigation, and recovery. This document provides practical guidance with a checklist to help an organization recover from a hydrogen incident and return to normal operations after the event scene has been stabilized and returned to the organization by the incident commander. This document does not include activities related to the immediate emergency response and initial investigations performed by other entities.

Mixing of hydrogen into natural gas, as a means of mitigating environmental concerns associated with the use of fossil fuels, poses a question of performance of appliances designed for use with natural gas, when fuelled by blends of hydrogen and natural gas. This study examines the performance of space and water heating appliances fuelled by methane as a natural gas proxy, and methane/hydrogen blends containing up to 15% hydrogen.

This report provides an evaluation by members of the Hydrogen Safety Panel (HSP) of the June 1, 2019 hydrogen release incident at the Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (Air Products) hydrogen trailer transfill (transfill) facility located in Santa Clara, California. This review was requested by the California Energy Commission (CEC) in May 2020 and examines data from Air Products, and the Santa Clara Fire Department to provide an HSP perspective on the incident cause, response, and recommended follow-up actions. 

The Baker-Strehlow-Tang vapor cloud explosion (VCE) blast load prediction methodology utilizes flame speed as a measure of explosion severity. In previous publications, guidance has been presented for selecting flame speeds as a function of congestion, confinement, and fuel reactivity. These recommended values were based on empirical data available from the literature.