White Papers
BakerRisk (San Antonio, Texas) is an employee-owned consulting firm that specializes in technical risk management solutions for industries ranging from oil and gas and petrochemicals to low carbon energy, manufacturing, and agriculture. Active in over 75 countries, BakerRisk has offices in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Egypt. During the firm’s 40-year history, it has offered key services directly applicable to the development of hydrogen hubs, including process safety, risk management plans, facility siting analysis, blast analysis, fire hazard and mitigation analysis, hazardous area classification, protective structure design, full-scale blast/fire testing and research/development, materials research, and incident investigation. These services are tailored to various phases of a capital project and build on each other as the phases progress.
BakerRisk has a robust external training program through the BakerRisk Learning Center, which includes a hydrogen safety focus course, as well as live hazards demonstrations at BakerRisk test facilities. In addition to providing risk management services, a significant portion of BakerRisk personnel are involved in research related to dispersions of gases such as hydrogen, jet and pool fires, explosions, and structural response to blast. This research is conducted at two large BakerRisk test sites. BakerRisk also develops qualitative and quantitative tools to perform complex consequence modeling and risk calculations.
The Climate Change Business Journal (CCBJ) recently interviewed experts from BakerRisk’s Low Carbon Energy group. Continue to read the Q&A.
In previous articles in this series, BakerRisk discussed the hydrogen economy and high-level hazards. Additionally, best practices and general guidance for performing a PHA on hydrogen processing facilities to accurately assess all the risks and consequences associated with hydrogen were also covered. This article will focus on the materials and potential damage mechanisms and hazards associated with the operation of equipment exposed to hydrogen, including pressure vessels, pipelines, piping, and other equipment handling hydrogen.
Hydrogen has been used in petroleum refining, fertilizer production, chemical synthesis and many more applications for centuries. Throughout hydrogen’s use, releases have resulted in numerous explosion and fire incidents. Hydrogen is becoming more prevalent as a low carbon energy solution since it can be used both as an energy carrier as well as a replacement for raw materials. As hydrogen is adopted across more industries and applications, continued emphasis on preventing release and escalation is essential.
Test programs, such as those discussed above, have provided significant validation of the current methodologies used to analyze hydrogen hazards. Despite the enormous amount of work done by BakerRisk, the ERC, and others to understand the hazards associated with hydrogen, there is still more work to be done.
As the biofuels industry continues to expand in support of global decarbonization mandates and objectives, facility owners and developers are being challenged to balance production efficiency, operational reliability, and personnel safety.
Dan Benac discusses the dangers of carbamate corrosion damage and the different mitigation methodologies available for urea equipment.
Contact: +1 (210) 824-5960
