Author: Thomas Jordan

HyRAM V1.0  (Hydrogen Risk Assessment Models), a software toolkit to assess the safety of hydrogen fueling and storage infrastructure, is now available at http://hyram.sandia.gov. HyRAM integrates models, methods and data used to inform fire codes to create a common platform for assessing hydrogen safety. HyRAM makes this information accessible to the hydrogen safety community to quantify accident scenarios, predict physical effects, and characterize the impact of hydrogen hazards on humans and structures. Official press release here: https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/sandias-hydrogen-risk-assessment-models-toolkit-now-available/.

HyRAM can be downloaded for free after acceptance of the license terms on the website. HyRAM is designed for Windows platforms. After users install HyRAM, they must also request a free product registration key for each system; instructions are provided when you first open HyRAM.

Katrina Groth will introduce the toolkit during a webinar April 26. Register at http://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/webinars.

You consider hydrogen being an dangerous substance? In the contrary, hydrogen is potentially very healthy. Just do a internet search (e.g. on Scholar Google) for “hydrogen as therapeutic medical gas” and you will find a steadily increasing number of scientific publications showing positive effects of molecular hydrogen on treating many deseases.

So you find “Hydrogen Water”, “Hydrogenated Water” and even “Hydrogen Pills”, which claim to provide you extra molecular hydrogen dissoveld in water at ppm level.

Maybe this helps improving further the public image of hydrogen. HySafe does not guarantee that these products will be good for your health or your wealth.

There is an open public online consultation on the development of a comprehensive, integrated Research, Innovation, and Competitiveness Strategy for the Energy Union. As a Brussels based organisation HySafe will provide input based on the identified research priorities and on the concept of a Hydrogen Safety Panel. If you want to support this, feel free (at least as a European member) to add your individual ideas.

So let’s hope that competitiveness also supports global needs for sustainability.

HySafe is planning a special session at WHEC2016 in Zaragoza. A time slot has been reserved on Wed June 15 (before the Gala dinner).

The proposed agenda for the “Hydrogen Safety and International Standardization with a Focus on Europe” session currently follows:

• 18:15    Welcome: HySafe and IAHE Safety Division (Jordan, Tchouvelev)
  including brief presentation on HySafe and the IAHE
• 18:25    ISO/TC 197 update (Tchouvelev, confirmed)
• 18:40    Germany update (Jordan, TBC)
• 18:55    CEN/TC268 and France update (Barthelemy, confirmed)
• 19:15    Spain update (Azkarate, confirmed)
• 19:30    UK update (Hawksworth, TBC)
• 19:45    Brief Q&A
• 20:00    Adjourn

The room will be announced in time. The session is open to all WHEC participants.

For updates please check on our events page.

For all who could not attend the ICHS2015 or wanted to recover specific presentations besides the papers included in the proceedings, HySafe now offers free access to this unique and still fresh information. Under http://www.ichs2015.com/index.php/presentations you will find almost all of the more than 100 presentations on hydrogen safety related issues.

HySafe is pleased to welcome Shell Global Solutions Ltd. as a new full member of the Association in the industry category. Shell will be represented by Pratap Sathiah.  Their membership follows the highly valuable contributions of Shell and their most recent representative, Les Shirvill, to the ICHS conference series and to the safety tasks of the IEA Hydrogen Implementing Agreement.  The HySafe consortium is looking forward to continued dialogue, knowledge sharing and important contributions by our newest industry member.

BTW, there is a nice publication of Shell about the colourful world of energy, including a chapter on hydrogen. Find a free download on http://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/colours.html

In the German newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on 16th of February 2016 there was an interesting article about daily risks titled “You should not forget to enjoy”. It was referring to a unit measuring individual risk called micromort. The definition of lethalities among one million people goes back to a publication of  Ronald A. Howard (1989): Microrisks for Medical Decision Analysis. International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 5, pp 357-370.

Based on the risk estimates of medical treatments it provides a comparative scale for risks in general. But like any other one out of xyz it does not cure the difficulties in understanding probabilistic concepts in general and it does not address the quite different perception of nominal identical risks. In this sense, beware of elephants – as they kill more people per year than sharks – and stop smoking in hydrogen cars. The latter not because of explosive hazards, but simply each smoked cigarette results in 0.7 micromorts and hydrogen cars do not yet provide statistics. So, no risk … no life.

As mentioned at our last general assembly a small sub-team of the executive board submitted a proposal referring to a topic of the 2015 call of the EC joint undertaking. However, the proposal “BestPractHyS”, which was designed to collect best practice and use of standards in designing, building, installing, permitting and operating stationary hydrogen systems (focussing on refueling stations and power-to-gas installations) was not supported.

Now, the open 2016 call provides again a similar topic: FCH-04-2-2016:Identification of legal-administrative barriers for the installation and operation of key FCH technologies. Members of the executive board try to bring into play HySafe in associated proposal preparations. However, HySafe won’t lead this proposal. Anyhow, if you have a strong interest to represent HySafe and provide critical knowledge for this potential project, let us know by contacting Thomas Jordan. However, keep in mind that safety is not an explicit element in this topic and safety is not highlighted in any part of the 2016 call.

The preparations for the International Conference for Hydrogen Safety (www.ichs2015.com) are on the way. The call for abstracts was very successful with more than 150 abstracts received.
Based on this input a draft program will be designed and the authors are requested to send their full papers within the next weeks.