On 17th of January 2017 the European FCH JU 2.0 has published the Annual Working Program 2017 containing several highly interesting and important call topics. Most relevant with regard to safety are the following two:

• with “FCH-04-4-2017: PNR for a safe use of liquid hydrogen” a topic dedicated to pre-normative safety research has been issued. Liquid hydrogen has been ranked high in the previous Research Priorities Workshops and our partner Sandia has recently increased their activities in the field of cryogenic hydrogen. KIT intends to develop a proposal with involvement of HySafe partners and possibly HySafe itself (depending on the following);
• slightly hidden in the  “Conditions of the Call” Chapter D in the work program the establishment of a European Hydrogen Safety Panel has been announced. In the respective text HySafe has been referred to several times. So there is hope that HySafe might be involved in this crucial activity. Anyway, we will support this panel in any regard.

Finally, it looks like that the seeds of the NoE and our steady efforts with regard to the above issues come up.

Although more than 100 abstracts have been received the ICHS Organizing Committee, has extended the call for abstracts of the ICHS2017 conference to January 30, 2017.

So please make use of this additional time an submit your abstract by end of January via the ICHS website (www.ichs2017.com) or directly via the abstract submission system http://conference.ing.unipi.it/ichs2017/openconf.php.

If you want to contribute a paper to the 7th International Hydrogen Safety Conference^® (ICHS^® 7) to be held from September 11 to 13, 2017 in Hamburg, you better quickly look up:

http://www.hysafe.info/ichs2017/

There you will find the call for abstracts. More information for participants will be published later.

The 9^th annual General Assembly of the HySafe members was held in at the Institute for Energy and Transport of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission near Petten (North Holland, The Netherlands) on September 28.

The HySafe members approved the report of the board about what HySafe did since the last meeting which was held in Tokyo in 2015 as well as the reports of the various committee chairs (Dissemination & PR, Industrial Relations, Conference, Research).

An additional committee on Education was created. Prov. Vladimir Molkov (University of Ulster) was elected as chairman. The chairmen for Dissemination & PR (Ulrich Schmidtchen), Industrial Relations (Akiteru Maruta), and Research (Jay Keller) were re-elected.

The assembly also appointed Andrei Tchouvelev, HySafe president until last year, as honorary member of the association.

The next General Assembly will be held next year in Hamburg in conjunction with the International Conference on Hydrogen Safety from September 11 to 13, 2017.

The final meeting of the EU project HyResponse (Hydrogen Safety and Emergency Response Training for First Responders) was held on September 15, 2016 in Aix-en-Provence, France. The city is the site of the national French school for fire service officers (ENSOSP), which was one of the project partners.

During the project the partners developed procedures and advice for first responders (which are mainly fire service men) what to do and what not to do in case of a fire or another emergency concerning hydrogen cars, buses, filling stations, or other installations.

The practical aspect of the matter played in important role. On the ENSOSP ground a new training facility was built which makes it possible to simulate various common emergency situations involving hydrogen and other gaseous fuels, in particular LPG and natural gas. Firemen can try to cope with torch flames, car fires, filling station emergencies, and tank fires.

Various training courses for firemen from different countries of Europe and other parts of the world were already held during the project, which will end on September 30, 2016. But the training facility in Aix-en-Provence will still be there and can be used in the future as well.

After rupture of a VW Touran CNG vessel during refueling gas company ARAL recommends not to refuel any VW CNG vehicle any further. VW has issued before a recall of about 36000 CNG cars because corrosion problems with the vessels have been known.

For further details see http://www.forbes.com/sites/bertelschmitt/2016/09/16/europe-volkswagen-cars-explode-in-gas-stations/#c533fbb6c6b1 for instance and the included link to a German automotive online magazine.

How such serious events might be excluded? More frequent inspections with suitable determination of state of health might be an approach. Probably the reaction to a similar event with hydrogen would be even stronger.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO) seeks
feedback from stakeholders regarding the construction and benefits of a US National Hydrogen Technology Showcase and Training station (HyTeST). The station would serve as a tool for research and development, testing, safety training, and outreach for community and commercial early adopters,
including station developers, owners, code officials, first responders, operators, investors, and insurers. Further details are available here.

The 21st World Hydrogen Energy Conference was held in Zaragoza (Spain) from June 13 to 16. A number of presentations had hydrogen safety as topic, but this was not the focus of the conference. HySafe therefore found it useful to arrange a session of its own about this.

HySafe president Thomas Jordan gave a brief overview about HySafe in general and also about the state of the art in Germany. Vice president Hervé Barthélémy brought the listeners up to date on the matters in France and also on standardization as far as it happens in CEN TC 268 WG 5.

The main hydrogen standards body in the world is ISO TC 197; Andrei Tchouvelev, chairman of the committee, presented the current work. He spoke also as chairman of the safety chapter of IAHE.

Also on the program were updates on the situation concerning hydrogen safety in Spain and the UK.

This was the fourth sequential edition of such a “Special Session on International Standardisation and Hydrogen Safety” which originated at WHTC2013 in Shanghai, China and successfully continued at WHEC2014 in Gwangju, Korea and WHTC2015 in Sydney, Australia. This time the focus was on Europe.

It became apparent that the close interaction between research, standards, regulations, and practical use is a key factor to let hydrogen remain a safe energy carrier. HySafe will continue to be a switchboard for information and communication for the field.

So at the end of the session HySafe president Thomas Jordan had every reason to be satisfied.

The 22nd Group Exhibition on Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and Batteries was held this year as part of the Hannover Fair, as it is already a tradition. A record number of 160 exhibitors shared the 5000 m² total area. They looked at the booths and also listened to the presentations given in the Public and the Technical Forum.

One of them was given by Thomas Jordan, president of HySafe. He gave a statement on “Research priorities for hydrogen safety”. It included a presentation of HySafe and of items where HySafe thinks more research is necessary to make hydrogen even safer than it is anyway.

You can see his presentation here:

Jordan presentation