LaChance, J L, Middleton, B, Groth, K. M. Comparison of NFPA and ISO Approaches for Evaluating Separation Distances (Inproceedings) Proceedings of the International Conference on Hydrogen Safety (ICHS 2011), San Francisco, CA, 2011.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{LaChanceICHS2011,
title = {Comparison of NFPA and ISO Approaches for Evaluating Separation Distances},
author = {J L LaChance and B Middleton and K M Groth},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-09-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Hydrogen Safety (ICHS 2011)},
address = {San Francisco, CA},
abstract = {The development of a set of safety codes and standards for hydrogen facilities is necessary to ensure they are designed and operated safely. To help ensure that a hydrogen facility meets an acceptable level of risk, code and standard development organizations (SDOs) are utilizing risk-informed concepts in developing hydrogen codes and standards. Two SDOs, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have been developing standards for gaseous hydrogen facilities that specify the facilities have certain safety features, use equipment made of material suitable for a hydrogen environment, and have specified separation distances. Under Department of Energy funding, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) has been supporting efforts by both of these SDOs to develop the separation distances included in their perspective standards. Important goals in these efforts are to use a defensible, science-based approach to establish these requirements and to the extent possible, harmonize the requirements. International harmonization of regulations, codes and standards is critical for enabling global market penetration of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

The successful approach to risk-inform the separation distances in the NFPA standards [1] is a model for establishment of additional requirements by NFPA and other SDOs. In fact, ISO has generally adopted the same approach to determine the separation distances in ISO 20100, “Gaseous hydrogen – Fuelling stations” [2]. In addition, the data and consequence models used in the NFPA analysis have also been generally adopted for use in the ISO separation distance evaluation. However, there are some important differences in the ISO and NFPA analyzes that make it difficult to compare the resulting separation distances. These differences include the scope of the application (i.e., bulk storage versus fuelling station), the differences in the separation distance table format used in the specific standards (pressure ranges and exposures), the risk criteria used in the risk analysis, the utilization of component leak data in the risk assessment, and the importance placed on the risk results. This paper discusses the differences between the approaches and data utilized in NFPA and ISO assessments and their effect on the resulting separation distances.},
keywords = {codes and standards, hazard identification, hydrogen, Hydrogen safety, infrastructure, Quantitative risk assessment (QRA), safety distance, Separation distance},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}

Abstract

The development of a set of safety codes and standards for hydrogen facilities is necessary to ensure they are designed and operated safely. To help ensure that a hydrogen facility meets an acceptable level of risk, code and standard development organizations (SDOs) are utilizing risk-informed concepts in developing hydrogen codes and standards. Two SDOs, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have been developing standards for gaseous hydrogen facilities that specify the facilities have certain safety features, use equipment made of material suitable for a hydrogen environment, and have specified separation distances. Under Department of Energy funding, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) has been supporting efforts by both of these SDOs to develop the separation distances included in their perspective standards. Important goals in these efforts are to use a defensible, science-based approach to establish these requirements and to the extent possible, harmonize the requirements. International harmonization of regulations, codes and standards is critical for enabling global market penetration of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

The successful approach to risk-inform the separation distances in the NFPA standards [1] is a model for establishment of additional requirements by NFPA and other SDOs. In fact, ISO has generally adopted the same approach to determine the separation distances in ISO 20100, “Gaseous hydrogen – Fuelling stations” [2]. In addition, the data and consequence models used in the NFPA analysis have also been generally adopted for use in the ISO separation distance evaluation. However, there are some important differences in the ISO and NFPA analyzes that make it difficult to compare the resulting separation distances. These differences include the scope of the application (i.e., bulk storage versus fuelling station), the differences in the separation distance table format used in the specific standards (pressure ranges and exposures), the risk criteria used in the risk analysis, the utilization of component leak data in the risk assessment, and the importance placed on the risk results. This paper discusses the differences between the approaches and data utilized in NFPA and ISO assessments and their effect on the resulting separation distances.