A historical analysis of safety of hydrogen transport technologies based on incidents records

Transport of hydrogen for industrial and aerospace applications is occurring since several decades, specially in the US. Several scientific reviews of these technologies from a safety point of view date back to the previous century. In a period in which a strengthening of the hydrogen supply chain is taking place, with expected scaling up of production, transport and use, it is worth to analyse the return of experience provided by available incidents descriptions. This work is based on the most recent dataset of the Hydrogen Incidents and Accidents Database (HIAD) managed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and focuses on two of the three incumbent hydrogen transportation technologies: compressed hydrogen tube trailers and liquid hydrogen tanker (hydrogen pipelines are presented in paper ID134). The paper presents basic statistics and analyses the cause-consequence relationship, discussing also the limitations of the methodological approach. The study confirms the high degree of safety characterised by the transport of liquid hydrogen in cryogenic tanks, with a low reported number of ignited releases. Despite the fact that transport by tube trailers has led in some cases to a more severe set of consequences, the observed impact from accidents on human health and environment appears to be lower for both transport technologies discussed in this work, when compared to other parts of the hydrogen supply and value chain.

MORETTO Pietro;  PITOIS Aurelien;  SMEDBERG Erik; 

2025-10-27

HySafe

JRC142693

979-12-243-0274-2 (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC142693,