ARIA 26208

The analysis of accidents involving hydrogen (H2) draws from a sample of 215 events involving the gas and recorded in the ARIA database.

After going through a few general indicators on such accidents, their consequences and impacted activities, the various risks related to the physico-chemical properties of hydrogen are dealt with in detail: tendency to escape, extreme flammability, property to detonate, impact on metal and alloy structures, highly reactive, etc.

In over 20% of the accidents studied, hydrogen was accidentally generated due to variety of reasons: corrosion of steel, reactions between water and metal, formation of water gas, reactions involving hydrides, etc.

Lastly, an analysis of the causes behind the accident indicated that 70% result from an “organisational and human failure”, thus bearing out the need to spread risk awareness at all hierarchical levels of a company.