Safety Considerations on Liquid Hydrogen

Verfondern, Karl

Book	PreJuSER-1311

Safety Considerations on Liquid Hydrogen

Verfondern, K. (Corresponding author)FZJ*

2008
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Zentralbibliothek, Verlag Jülich
ISBN: 978-3-89336-530-2

Jülich : Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Zentralbibliothek, Verlag, Schriften des Forschungszentrums Jülich : Energie & Umwelt / Energy & Environment 10, VIII, 167 S. (2008)

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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/3135

Abstract: The interest in hydrogen as a clean fuel and energy carrier of the future has grown in many countries and initiated comprehensive research, development, and demonstration activities with the main objective of the transition from a fossil towards a CO$_{2}$ emission lean energy structure as the ultimate goal. Reasons for these worldwide incentives towards a change of the energy structure are the obvious indications for a climate change from man-made greenhouse gas emissions, the steadily increasing world energy consumption connected with the finite nature of fossil resources, but also the need of reducing national dependencies on energy imports. Hydrogen represents an energy carrier with high energy content and a clean, environmentally friendly source of energy to the end-user. The volume-related energy content of gaseous hydrogen, however, is comparatively small. For various applications of hydrogen where volume is an essential issue, it is necessary, e.g., to liquefy the hydrogen for the sake of volume reduction. But there are also other situations where the liquid state represents a reasonable and economic solution for storage and distribution of large amounts of hydrogen depending on the end-user’s requirements. Furthermore liquid hydrogen has the advantage of extreme cleanliness making it, apart from its cooling ability, appropriate in many industrial applications. Major drawback is the enormous energy input required to liquefy the hydrogen gas, which has a significant impact on the economy of handling LH$_{2}$. The experimental and theoretical investigation of the characteristics of liquid hydrogen, its favorable and unfavorable properties, as well as the lessons learnt from accidents have led to a set of codes, standards, regulations, and guidelines, which resulted in a high level of safety achieved today. This applies to both LH$_{2}$ production and the methods of mobile or stationary LH$_{2}$ storage and transportation/distribution, and its application in both science and industries. The hazards associated with the presence and operation of LH$_{2}$ containing systems are subject of safety and risk assessments. Essential part of such accident sequence analyses is the simulation of the physical phenomena, which occur in connection with the inadvertent release of LH$_{2}$ into the environment by computation models. The behavior of cryogenic pool propagation and vaporization on either a liquid or a solid ground is principally well understood. Furthermore state-of-the-art computer models have been developed and validated against respective experimental data. There are, however, still open questions which require further efforts to extent the still poor experimental data basis. These efforts should include the examination of the pool propagation from large spills of LH$_{2}$, the vaporization on different grounds, and pool fire, but also the atmospheric dispersion behavior of cold vapor clouds evolving from the vaporization of the cryogenic liquid.

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