Applications of Process Safety Concepts to the Hydrogen Economy

Hydrogen is widely produced and used in the process industries with growing use in the public domain. While the former area of focus would obviously necessitate process safety considerations, the latter involves activities such as transportation in which occupational safety issues for individuals are paramount. The current research addresses this issue by identifying several areas of application in the hydrogen economy for three key process safety concepts: (i) inherently safer design, (ii) safety management systems, and (iii) the use of case studies. This paper thus illustrates, by means of referenced examples, the transferable nature of key process safety concepts to various features of the emerging hydrogen economy. The primary thesis of this work is the notion that inherently safety design principles, safety management systems, and lessons learned from case histories have broader implications for safety than would be apparent by restricting their use solely to the process industries.