Potential hazard consequences to personnel exposed to the ignition of small volumes of weakly confined stoichiometric hydrogen/air mixture

Anthony Averill, Jenni Ingram, Luis Gomez-agustina, Paul Holborn, Paul Battersby, Claire Benson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Many studies have been devoted to understanding the consequence of ignition events that could occur as a result of using hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels or when hydrogen is present in large scale industrial or nuclear waste sites. Little attention has however, been given to the effect of explosion in small scale operations: this could involve service work with manual handling and manipulation of gas containing packages or vessels. The purpose of this study is to begin to address this knowledge gap and report the results of an experimental program carried out to simulate the effect of localised and weakly confined small volume hydrogen explosions on personal safety. Three aspects of personal injury consequences are considered; injury from shock loading to the head/brain, skin burns and acoustic/hearing damage. It is concluded from ignition and acoustic noise exposure experiments, carried with stoichiometric hydrogen /air mixtures, that injuries arising from shock loading or burns to the skin are less likely than hearing damage. It is suggested that further work should focus on the noise exposure and hearing damage effects of small scale explosions.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)22733-22745
JournalInternational Journal of Hydrogen Energy
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Nov 2018

Keywords

  • 09 Engineering
  • Energy
  • 03 Chemical Sciences

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