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Executive Summary
Public acceptance of hydrogen as an energy
carrier for transportation and power generation technologies will depend on the
public’s confidence in the safety of those vehicles and power systems as well
as the supporting energy delivery and storage infrastructure. Ensuring the
safety of the infrastructure for transporting, storing, and delivering hydrogen
will be critical to the successful implementation of a hydrogen economy.
Industry has begun developing new packaging technologies and
delivery systems—such as mobile refueling stations—to increase the efficiency
and reduce the cost of deploying hydrogen to end use consumer applications.
Many of these technologies involve packaging that uses new materials or
operates at increased pressure over existing industrial applications.
To enable successful introduction of hydrogen and fuel cells into
the marketplace, the development of appropriate technical codes, standards, and
regulations providing high levels of safety and environmental protection should
proceed in parallel with the substantial pace of new technology development
that is underway. If appropriate technical codes, standards, and regulations
are not developed in pace with new technology development, the risks are
twofold:
- The lack of appropriate safety requirements could
result in delayed technology introduction, lowered technology adoption rates,
or unnecessary additional costs to deploy new technologies.
- Technologies could be introduced and adopted which, to
some degree, pose unnecessary safety and/or property risks.
The purpose of this project is to identify gaps in the current
hydrogen technology base and to recommend solutions for closing these gaps.
The study used a hazard assessment-like procedure that
incorporated the following steps:
- Identifying the Key Areas required for a safe hydrogen economy and their criticality.
- Assessing the state of these Key Areas:
- Identifying that the important factors have been or are being addressed.
- Determining if prior work is still applicable or if recent breakthroughs or observations render the prior work obsolete.
- Identifying and prioritizing priority “gaps” and highlight areas that warrant further study
- Developing recommendations for Key Areas, including research, studies, or trials that could close gaps and resolve shortcomings in understanding all aspects of safe hydrogen gas operations in consumer end-use environment.
Each Key Area was assigned a criticality and progress
categorization. Criticality was categorized as high, medium, or low while the
state of progress used the following categories:
- Fully Addressed: technology is mature and safety procedures (not necessarily regulations) are established.
- Addressed, Monitoring: technical work is well underway and safety procedures are reasonably well developed.
- Addressed, Not Adequately: technical work has started and safety procedures are under development.
- Not Addressed: no progress, or efforts are only identified or getting organized.
Criticality and progress were assigned weights and the score for
each Key Area is then calculated as the product of criticality and progress
weights. The Key Areas were also divided into three groups—Pipeline (continuous
transport), Transport (discrete transport), and Crosscut (areas which affect
both pipeline and transport). The Crosscut group largely dealt with material and
environmental issues, such as embrittlement, strength and fatigue, pressure and
temperature, etc. The timeframe for initiation of efforts to address issues was
also assessed. This is not necessarily the same as the timeframe at which it is
anticipated that the technology will be widely deployed.
A total of 86 Key Area items were assessed: 8 Crosscut, 47
Pipeline, and 31 Transport. In terms of criticality, 64 items were assessed
High, 21 Medium, and 1 Low. All of the Crosscut items were assessed at High
criticality, largely because material and environmental issues potentially
impact a number of transportation technologies.
In terms of progress, 37 Key Areas have progress assessments of
Not Addressed, 47 Addressed, Not Adequately, and 2 Addressed, Monitoring. Most
of the Crosscut items have progress assessments of Addressed, Not Adequately as
there are a number of material and environmental efforts underway, but most are
in their early stages or are just getting underway. The Pipeline group is more
evenly divided between Not Addressed and Addressed, Not Adequately while
Transport has fewer Not Addressed compared to Addressed, Not Adequately.
The distribution of scores—the product of the weights of
criticality and progress—is 29 scores of 40, 8 scores of 24, 33 scores of 20,
with the rest at 12 or below. A score of 40 represents a combination of High
criticality and progress of Not Addressed. A score of 24 represents a
combination of Medium criticality and progress of Not Addressed. A score of 20
represents a combination of High criticality and progress of Addressed, Not
Adequately. The Pipeline group has the highest number of 40 scores, also
representing the largest Key Area count for the scores both within the Pipeline
and overall. The Crosscut group is mostly 20 scores, reflecting the progress
assessment distribution for those items. For Transport, nearly half the items
have 20 scores (High criticality and progress of Addressed, Not Adequately) as
these items tend to be areas where applicable safety practices could be adapted
to new transport technologies.
In terms of timeframe, 62 Key Areas have assessments of 0 to 5
years and 24 of 5 to 15 years. All the Crosscut items are short term while 60%
to 80% of the Pipeline and Transport items, respectively, are short term. Most
needs are short term, either because the technologies are currently or shortly
being deployed or because there is a long lead-time anticipated for development
of safety practices for the item.
Examining the combination of score and timeframe, there are 20
items in the short term with scores of 40, 3 items with scores of 24, and 29
items with scores of 20.
Specific recommendations are found in each Key Area Item
Assessment.
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