Risk Assessment and Ventilation Modeling for Hydrogen Vehicle Repair Garages

The availability of repair garage infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is becoming increasingly important for future industry growth. Ventilation requirements for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can affect both retrofitted and purpose-built repair garages and the costs associated with these requirements can be significant. A hazard and operability (HAZOP) study was performed to identify key risk-significant scenarios related to hydrogen vehicles in a repair garage. Detailed simulations and modeling were performed using appropriate computational tools to estimate the location, behaviour, and severity of hydrogen release based on key HAZOP scenarios. This work compares current fire code requirements to an alternate ventilation strategy to further reduce potential hazardous conditions. It is shown that position, direction, and velocity of ventilation have a significant impact on the amount of flammable mass in the domain.