Development of Uniform Harm Criteria for Use in Quantitative Risk Analysis of the Hydrogen Infrastructure

This paper discusses the preliminary results of the Risk Management subtask efforts within the International Energy Agency (IEA) Hydrogen Implementing Agreement (HIA) Task 19 on Hydrogen Safety to develop uniform harm criteria for use in the Quantitative Risk Assessments (QRAs) of hydrogen facilities. The IEA HIA Task 19 efforts are focused on developing guidelines and criteria for performing QRAs of hydrogen facilities. The performance of QRAs requires that the level of harm that is represented in the risk evaluation be established using deterministic models. The level of harm is a function of the type and level of hazard. The principle hazard associated with hydrogen facilities is uncontrolled accumulation of hydrogen in (semi) confined spaces and consecutive ignition. Another significant hazard is combustion of accidentally released hydrogen gas or liquid, which may or may not happen instantaneously. The primary consequences from fire hazards consist of personnel injuries or fatalities, or facility and equipment damage due to high air temperatures, radiant heat fluxes, or direct contact with hydrogen flames. The possible consequences of explosions on humans and structures or equipment include blast wave overpressure effects, impact from fragments generated by the explosion, the collapse of buildings, and the heat effects from subsequent fire balls. A harm criterion is used to translate the consequences of an accident, evaluated from deterministic models, to a probability of harm to people, structures, or components. Different methods can be used to establish harm criteria including the use of threshold consequence levels and continuous functions that relate the level of a hazard to a probability of damage. This paper presents a survey of harm criteria that can be utilized in QRAs and makes recommendations on the criteria that should be utilized for hydrogen-related hazards.