VIII.6  Hydrogen Safety Panel, Safety Knowledge Tools and First Responder Training Resources

VIII.6  Hydrogen Safety Panel, Safety Knowledge Tools and First Responder Training Resources

VIII.6  Hydrogen Safety Panel, Safety Knowledge Tools and First Responder Training Resources

Hydrogen Safety Panel, Safety Knowledge Tools, and First Responder Training Resources 

Hydrogen Safety Panel, Safety Knowledge Tools, and First Responder Training Resources 

In developing a 70 megapascal (MPa) fueling infrastructure, it is critical to ensure that a vehicle equipped with a lower service pressure fuel tank is never filled from a 70 MPa fueling source. Filling of a lower service pressure vehicle at a 70 MPa fueling source is likely to result in a catastrophic event with severe injuries or fatalities. The Hydrogen Safety Panel recommends that DOE undertake a two‐step process to address this issue.

The Hydrogen Safety Panel brings a broad cross-section of expertise from the industrial, government, and academic sectors to help advise the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fuel Cell Technologies Office through its work in hydrogen safety, codes, and standards.  The Panel’s initiatives in reviewing safety plans, conducting safety evaluations, identifying safety-related technical data gaps, and supporting safety knowledge tools and databases cover the gamut from research and development to demonstration and deployment.

The purpose of this guide is to assist users of codes and standards that apply to hydrogen application and use in understanding and applying the approval, certification, listing, and labeling provisions of the codes and standards, in any application where the required certification, listing, and labeling of services, methods, or equipment has not yet been established or achieved.  

The HSP has reviewed many safety plans for gaseous hydrogen. An emerging trend is the use of liquid (cryogenic) hydrogen in the commercial market, potentially near residential areas, for fueling hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Finding a “qualified” person to determine liquid hydrogen code compliance is difficult, and the skills necessary of such an individual are not well defined in the codes and standards.

Natural gas was first used as a vehicle fuel as far back as the 1930s. The first natural gas vehicles, which ran on uncompressed natural gas, were called “gas bag” vehicles and were used to combat gasoline shortages during World War I [1]. During and after World War II, compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles using fuel tanks mounted on the roof gained popularity in France and Italy [2]. Today, there are more than 24 million CNG vehicles in service worldwide, including CNG buses that continue the early tradition of mounting fuel tanks on the roof.