Vent stacks and building ventilation systems are different and should be analyzed/designed differently. NFPA 2 has different location requirements for vent stack and ventilation system outlets. There are code requirements for elevation, distances from exposures, and between exposures. 

There are no specific regulatory or code requirements for vent system separation distances. These…

The ASME BPV Code, and other Codes by reference, require less than back pressure of 10% of device set pressure from the release flowrate for proper operation of reclosing relief devices such as relief valves. Backpressure from non-reclosing or non-ASME devices may be higher so an analysis is required. It’s not enough to assume the vent system need only be designed for 10% of the set pressure.…

The SRV orientation is critical for many reasons. Many of these are:

1. Manufacturer recommendations – Manufacturers may require a certain orientation based on the internal design.
2. To ensure no back pressure changes the setpoint beyond allowable design
3. To ensure moisture does not enter the relief device. This is critical for the operation for LH2 and also for GH2 (in…

Yes, there are differences due to the differences in the fluid properties. We’re not sure what is meant by blowdown. If this means that should the gases be vented to a vent stack, possibly, but for certain these need to be vented to a safe location.

Exhaust systems (sometimes referred to as ventilation systems) are used to exhaust hydrogen and air mixtures. Normally these are used to vent streams with less than flammable range hydrogen in air.

That is, hydrogen detectors trigger venting or the ventilation systems runs during all hydrogen operations. In these instances, low concentrations of hydrogen are expected, but deflagration is…

The deflagration pressure is dependent upon many variables.

However, some general concepts are:

1. Deflagration pressure is proportional to operating pressure
2. Deflagration pressure is inversely related to initial temperature
3. Deflagration pressure is based on concentration and H2/O2 ratio
4. In general, an internal deflagration is unlikely to exceed about a 10…

Liquid hydrogen will almost never accumulate in a vent system since vent systems are typically designed without insulation. The extremely cold liquid hydrogen temperature of -420 F.

Additionally, vent stacks on an LH2 tank are connected to the vapor phase of the tank. Only in a few rare instances will LH2 be entrained in the gas stream.

Accumulators are recommended at the bottom of…

Low-pressure vents at mostly low hydrogen purity are not as large safety risk as high-pressure pure hydrogen vents. These vents should still go to a vent stack, but it will probably be small in diameter and thus the tee vent at the top can be small.

If the purge requires high flow, if purging horizontally, the reaction forces of the flow exiting and the hydrogen cloud should be modeled…

A release is defined by the amount of hydrogen, the rate of hydrogen flow, vent location (indoors or outdoors), geometry in the area (confined or not), and pressure. 

A small or large release should be differentiated by the damage that can occur because of an ignition. This can be a fire, deflagration, or detonation.

Therefore, the relative size of the release will vary based…

Typical practice for gaseous tube trailers is to vent relief devices independently to the top of the vehicle. This is primarily to accommodate the large flowrates and high thrust forces involved from these releases. It’s fairly easy to do this since the vent lines are fairly short due to the maximum road height of trailers. Regulations do not prohibit piping multiple devices into a
single…