Regulations and Research on RC&S for Hydrogen Storage Relevant to Transport and Vehicle Issues with Special focus on Composite Containments

Developers interested in high pressure use and especially in mobile use of hydrogen rely on composite vessels for dangerous goods transport and onboard storage. Thus, composite materials and systems deserve special consideration. History gives interesting background information important to the understanding of the current situation as to regulations, codes, and standards. Based on this review, origins of different regulations for the storage of Hydrogen as dangerous good and as propellant for vehicles will be examined. Both categories started out using steel and sometimes aluminium as cylinder material. With composite materials becoming more common, a new problem emerged: vital input for regulations on composite pressure systems was initially derived from decades of experience with steel vessels. As a result, both regulatory fields suffer somewhat from this common basis. Only later developments regarding requirements for composite vessels have begun to go more and more separate ways. Thus these differences lead to some lacks in regulation with respect to composite storage systems. In principle, in spite of separate development, these lacks are in both cases very much the same: there are uncertainties in the prediction of safe service life, in retesting procedures of composite vessels and in their intervals. Hence, different aspects of uncertainties and relevant approaches to solutions will be explained.