Hydrogen solutions

As efforts to decarbonize greater parts of the economy intensify, the role of hydrogen as an energy carrier is expected to accelerate. This means that it will be produced, transported, stored and utilized at a greater scale and in other settings than in the past. As a combustible gas, management of the fire and explosion hazards associated with hydrogen is crucial to its successful deployment.

In many ways hydrogen presents similar hazards to natural gas. Some properties present a higher risk, for example hydrogen has a wider flammability range in air than natural gas. Other properties, such as hydrogen’s higher buoyancy, can be used to reduce risk by vertical dispersion. In the event of combustion, tests have shown that hydrogen will burn as a jet fire, similar to natural gas. In the event of an explosion, hydrogen presents a much greater risk than natural gas due to the speed of the flame propagation and the risk of detonation. This makes the incorporation of blast relief architectural systems crucial.

InterDam has extensive experience with light-weight architectural solutions for jet fires, blast resistance and blast relief and growing experience with hydrogen projects specifically.
For hydrogen production installations InterDam has supplied fire resistant and blast relief architectural items. As an example, InterDam has provided 2 hours (UL/EI/Cellulosic) fire rated walls, roofs, doors and windows, including 6,5 kPa blast rating and a pressure vent at 20 PSF (957 N/m2) for part of an insulated wall system.