Hydrogen Venting: Lessons Learnt for Safe Design and Operation

Hydrogen is regularly vented safely during production, transportation and application. Vents are designed to vent gas, but assume that the gas might ignite with jet flame and associated thermal radiation. Recently ,Air Products has experienced incidents that have shown additional hazards, such as jet explosion, and incidents where operations personnel have reacted incorrectly to vents that have ignited. This paper will describe some of these incidents, discusses lessons learnt and provide recommendations.