How Can Hydrogen Systems be Made Safer Through Design?

CRAIG GIFFORD:
Welcome to Ask Swagelok. I'm Craig Gifford, here again with Chuck Hayes who is Swagelok’s global technical lead for clean energy.

And we've been discussing differences in designing fluid systems for hydrogen applications versus oil and gas applications.

So, today, Chuck, let's talk about safety. Chuck, how can hydrogen fluid systems be made safer through design?

CHUCK HAYES:
Well, Craig, that's really simple. First of all, let's talk about safety. Safety—typically, with hydrogen, what you want to think about is the fact that you want to keep hydrogen safe from fire or explosion.

So, the explosive limit, or the fire limit, for it is about 4% in oxygen. So, keeping that below 4% is really important. We typically use 1% as the number. So, any leaks that can accumulate out to be in that number is a problem.

We recommend that you use Swagelok product. The trick is that oftentimes in oil and gas, the engineering firm will go ahead out to package vendors and get bids for building systems or parts of systems. Those package vendors will typically use the least expensive component suppliers they can find.

The problem is then you get mixtures of different technologies; you get a lot of different changes happening within those systems. They're hard to maintain. They're hard to manage over their entire lifetime. And the mixing of technology—mixing of technology is not ideal.

So, what we recommend is that you specify in one supplier for that entire thing—for all your valves, all of your fittings—to give you that level of consistency and that ability to maintain and have a long, safe life with a good product.

CRAIG GIFFORD:
Great. Well, thank you, Chuck. And thank you for joining us at Ask Swagelok.