'Explosion after explosion' Three injured after truck towing 420kg of hydrogen crashes and explodes in Ohio

[NNadir]

'Explosion after explosion' | Three injured after truck towing 420kg of hydrogen crashes and explodes in Ohio

Subtitle:

It was the second road accident involving the transportation of H2 in the US in the space of two days

An excerpt:

A pick-up truck and trailer carrying large cylinders of hydrogen crashed and exploded in Ohio yesterday, sending “balls of flames” ten metres into the air...

...Coincidentally, a day earlier, a hydrogen tanker crashed and overturned in the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania, trapping the driver.

The pick-up and trailer — belonging to North Carolina-based hydrogen fuel manufacturer and distributor OneH2 — collided with a Toyota Corolla in Orange Township, near the state capital Columbus, at around 2.30pm, before catching fire...

...“Everything went up in flames. There were balls of flames going up into the air and loud whistling noise,” he told local media.

“Explosion after explosion after explosion and it just didn’t stop...”

... And even without any ignition, high-pressure hydrogen leakage may cause spontaneous combustion and explosion, according to an academic paper published in the journal Energy Reports in 2022...

A link to the academic paper is here:

Hao Li, Xuewen Cao, Yang Liu, Yanbo Shao, Zilong Nan, Lin Teng, Wenshan Peng, Jiang Bian, Safety of hydrogen storage and transportation: An overview on mechanisms, techniques, and challenges, Energy Reports, Volume 8, 2022, Pages 6258-6269.

An excerpt of that paper:

...Hydrogen can easily cause material failure, which in turn can lead to leakage. Hydrogen leakage is followed by a mixture of air in a certain space to form a gas cloud; if it encounters an ignition source at this time, hydrogen cloud explosions easily occur. Even without ignition sources, high-pressure hydrogen leakage may cause spontaneous combustion and explosion. In 2019, there were several hydrogen explosions in Norway, the United States and South Korea. Among them, the explosion of a hydrogen fuel storage tank in South Korea caused 2 deaths and 6 injuries ( Yang et al., 2021). The causes of the accidents were hydrogen cloud explosions and chain explosions caused by hydrogen spontaneous combustion. These once again caused widespread public concern for hydrogen energy safety...

The material failure, which is well known, is called "hydrogen embrittlement." It's a big issue in chemical engineering and materials science.

The two deaths associated with the hydrogen explosion most probably exceed the deaths from radiation observed from the hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima reactors, since there is very little evidence that radiation leaks killed anyone, although fear of radiation related to unwise evacuations did kill people. The hydrogen generated at the Fukushima reactors was generated by steam at very high temperatures reacting with ziroconium metal alloys.

Comparison of mortality patterns after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant radiation disaster and during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Motohiro Tsuboi et al 2022 J. Radiol. Prot. 42 031502)

It's open sourced, but an excerpt is relevant:

However, in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant(FDNPP) accident, no direct health hazards due to radiation, such as acute radiation injury, were observed, while various indirect health effects were reported even in the acute phase [2, 3]. Major health effects are attributed to the initial emergency evacuation and displacement, deterioration of the shelter environment, evacuation from nursing homes, and psychological and social health effects. In addition, there were also the effects of medical collapse, where lives that could normally be saved by medical care could not be saved due to a lack of medical resources [4, 5]. It is known that these effects are particularly susceptible to the socially vulnerable [6].

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I added the bold.

Have a great day tomorrow.