In the afternoon of the 18th September 2018 about 40 experts met in Buxton, UK, to summarise the state-of-the-art and derive research priorities for the safe use of liquid hydrogen LH2 in non-industrial settings.
In advance to the workshop a tabled questionnaire for a phenomena identification and ranking exercise was distributed. The evaluation of the results showed that the activities of the PRESLHY project are in general in line with the experts view. However, there were three topics which induced some discussion and potential adjustment of the work program:
- BLEVE. This phenomenon has been ranked relatively high. On one hand there is some justification for claiming, that for well heat insulated cryovessels, as used for LH2, this phenomenon is less relevant than for LPG, for instance. However, a few historic accident cases showed that there is a potential for such energetic scenarios.
As there is a recently started small dedicted project on BLEVE phenomenon with PRESLHY partners, advisors respectively, involved, no experiments on the BLEVE topic will be planned in PRESLHY. Moreover, it should be noted, that due to scaling constraints a relevant test program would induce considerable costs. - MATERIAL COMPATIBILITY. Also this topic was ranked relatively high. However, from the very beginning PRESLHY explicitely excluded this quite huge domain from the work content for budgetary constraints. It is recommended to treat this topic in a separate dedicated project.
- JET FIRES. This topic was ranked surprisingly low. In the discussion it turned out that there is the general assumption that the quite well established models for “warm” releases will work well also in the low temperature domain.
The project will seek to slim down the experimental program for jet fires and rather focus on a few validation cases.
The presentations are available on the workshop website.