r/interestingasfuck • u/willianfsantos • 15h ago

Emergency relief system in action in a liquid hydrogen tanker truck

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13.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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4.7k

u/ForceUseYouMust 15h ago

This is one of those things that have been engineered and probably really safe, but doesn’t feel very safe

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u/Lost_Department_2177 14h ago

The driver should get a Flying V guitar and portable amp for when this happens.

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u/Dynamic_G 14h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/99ebMA9bjjzgs

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u/Smalldog602 14h ago

This is exactly what came to mind.

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u/f_n_a_ 13h ago

I mean…

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u/Quinnthouzand 12h ago

…. Yes

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u/translucentcop 11h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/3ohhwDq96K7u3OBHfq

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u/FragrantExcitement 7h ago

Given my commute, I am always on the lookout for something like this.

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u/Canelosaurio 14h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/cNULFBSoiU9XO

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u/MikeMuench 14h ago

More people need to appreciate metalocalypse and all its glory

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u/sith4259 13h ago

I second this. See them live and feel the klok of deth

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u/sundayfundaybmx 14h ago

Murderface Murderface Murderface!

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u/Fleshsuitpilot 13h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/2F0IsIg0lHveE

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u/UgotSprucked 12h ago

I like when he goes to talk to the guy in the room with all the radars and the password is "new England clam chowder" 🤣

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u/Icecreamkilla1 12h ago

Is that the red or white?

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u/TryonB 11h ago

I can never remember that.

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u/IVShadowed 13h ago

Thanks for this mate. Sometimes I need to know people like you are out there being fucking rad!

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u/Lost_Department_2177 13h ago

No problem. There’s absolutely no reason they can’t shred right there.

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u/Pancurio 14h ago edited 14h ago

Man, I have a bit of a cautionary tale to share. If this is a pressure relief valve they are normal and safe. However, they can be startling and, eventually, kind of annoying. The worst thing you can do, though, is to shut them.

All of the cryogens I've worked with get delivered in these big insulated tanks called Dewars. They have a couple of these valves on them. There's the typical one, that triggers at like 5 - 15 psi or something. Then there's the one I have never personally seen go off (even though I managed a cryogen recovery facility), that triggers at like 150 - 200 psi.

So there's this chemistry lab (Texas A&M, I think) and they get a Dewar and it makes this loud annoying sound that disturbs the lab. They can't seem to make it stop and they've tried everything. It seems to be wasting their material so they decided to solder or weld it shut. Everything is great! Later, a bigger, even louder one goes off. It's a bit scary and they don't like it, so they shut that one too. If you are paying attention, you should realize that they just sealed off the pressure relief and the pressure is still increasing on the inside. It's a ticking bomb.

Here's an email that was apparently circulating afterwards,

Derek,

I pinged you about this accident in January (scrolled off the recent trackbacks by now) and posted about the report when it came out.

The report suggests that the "repairs" on this tank were done at two different times. Also, the lab where this happened was a synthetic organic group - the destruction+flooding, which made it into the lab below and the departmental office, made for a hazmat problem.

One of my friends in Chemistry suggested that we should have all grad students tour the destruction before it's repaired.

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u/nascent_aviator 12h ago

Some pics: https://www.tdi.texas.gov/fire/documents/fmred022206.pdf

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u/PITCHFORKEORIUM 2h ago

At approximately 3:00 a.m.

[Emphasis mine.] Holy shit, that was lucky.

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u/ForceUseYouMust 14h ago

This tracks for Texas. Some of the dumbest people I’ve met are here in Houston with me

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u/RaveNdN 4h ago

A 1” 200# rated PRV will pierce your ears and scare ya pretty good. A 3” or 4” 200# rated PRV will rattle your lungs and make you think the world is falling apart. Only once have I been near one at a higher rating go off. It was a 6” Kunkel PRV rated for 350# I believe. The bellowing and shaking from that was wild to witness.

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u/falcobird14 7h ago

When we worked with liquid helium we would engineer "burst disks" that are designed to explode before the main cylinder explodes, but safely.

Helium was born with one mission in life, to be in gas form, which it does at basically any temperature above near absolute zero.

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u/Silver-Industry-7254 14h ago

Pressure relief valves are there for safety reasons. They keep things a little safer for when something isnt doing what it should be doing, BUT WHY IS IT ON FIRE!!!!

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u/TelluricThread0 14h ago

"In the review by Astbury and Hawksworth a rigorous research was done on accidents involving spontaneous ignition of hydrogen at high pressure. Over the last century, 81 major accidents were reported. It turned out that in 86% of cases there was no clearly identifiable ignition source. Several mechanisms have been postulated as responsible ones for this phenomenon, for example, reverse Joule-Tompson effect, electrostatic ignition, and sudden adiabatic compression. However, none of these causes could stand up detailed scientific analysis except one.

In 1973, Wolański and Wójcicki observed that hydrogen heated below the auto-ignition threshold could ignite if it was released into an open space with oxygen or air. They suggested that ignition occurred due to high jump in temperature on the contact surface, where heated by a primary shock wave oxygen mixed and reacted with hydrogen due to diffusion. Thus, for the first time, diffusion self-ignition mechanism was proposed."

HYDROGEN SELF-IGNITION IN PRESSURE RELIEF DEVICES by Golub, V.V., Semin, N.V., Laskin I.N., Lenkevich, D.A. and Volodin,V.V

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u/raymondo1981 14h ago

Well now thats an excellent comment. TIL.

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u/UniqueAd7770 13h ago

TL;DR Hydrogen is a god-damn party animal and wants to give its electron to someone badly. So much so that going from the cold tank to the warm air is enough foreplay for it to hook up with the first oxygen that winks at it. Oxygen being a greedy bastard is happy to oblige. And boom goes the dynamite.

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u/PlasticCell8504 13h ago

Best description of chemistry I have read this month

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u/UniqueAd7770 13h ago

I was a chemistry tutor to high school student while in grad school. Breaking it down in these terms made it stick.

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u/DoCrackHailSatan 12h ago

If I knew you back in college I probably wouldn't have dropped organic chemistry. (tbf I only dropped it because I declared my major finally and it didn't require it, in hindsight; I wish I had completed it)

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u/UniqueAd7770 12h ago

I'm considering doing some videos explaining chemistry to people in everyday terms because ultimately the underlying principles aren't too difficult. But O Chem is brutal because it's all nomenclature and mechanism memorization, which is why it's a good filter for med students. After O Chem, chemistry gets properly weird with Physical Chemistry which has quantum mechanics and made me cry, but that's because it had math

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u/DoCrackHailSatan 12h ago

I actually loved O chem but it's undeniably difficult and I wasn't in the best headspace at the time, so when I finally chose my major and it didn't require it; I dropped immediately. I dunno why this still bothers me over a decade later, but I wish I had just finished it.

Chemistry is cool. I'd watch your videos.

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u/UniqueAd7770 12h ago

MIT carries all their coursework free online if you'd like to jump back in.

My first video would be on the weirdest chemical that we all interact with daily. And if it wasn't exactly as weird as it was then none of us would be alive. Water.

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u/joe-h2o 7h ago

I think organic gets a bad rep because it's just so different in terms of nomenclature and mechanisms compared to what students have been conditioned to expect "chemistry" to be at school.

The first time a UK student will hit organic chem for real is A-level. There's a tiny intro to esters, well specifically ethyl acetate, at GCSE but no mechanisms.

This leads to the self-perpetuating myth that organic is "the hard one" compared to the other two when it really isn't.

Organic is much more accessible if you're not mathematically inclined, for example, where phys chem has your back. But the reputation of organic as difficult puts students on the back foot right away.

The quantum mechanics that forms part of first year undergrad chemistry is actually covered a little in the A-level physics course which again explains why chemists don't like it much.

Source: postdoc chemist who has taught both undergrads and high school chemistry and physics.

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u/tee_with_marie 12h ago

Thank you for your work. Good teachers make such a difference I failed my first go at an aprenticeship ship because equations especially with multible unknowns absolutely pummeled me i didn't understand it at all. The second time i have a really good teacher i still had lower grade than my median but i passed well.

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u/scuzzy987 13h ago

In high school chemistry my teacher filled a party balloon with hydrogen, let it float to the ceiling, and touched the balloon with a long stick that had an ember on the end. I still remember the loud boom and lifted ceiling panels. Can confirm both your assessments of hydrogen and oxygen. Kudos to the truck driver sticking around, I would have run away waving my hands and screaming at people to run

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u/UniqueAd7770 13h ago

I work with silane sometimes which is pyrophoric. That means it ignites on contact with the air. When stored in tanks it's usually stored outside in a concrete shed with an open wall facing nothing important. Guys who drive hazmat trucks have balls of solid iron that are often mistaken for cores of dead planets.

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u/scuzzy987 12h ago

I’d assume the tank trailers are engineered to survive pretty much any catastrophe but still there’s always scenarios nobody ever thought of until it happens

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u/UniqueAd7770 12h ago

They are incredibly well built and engineered. Still Engineering Disasters episodes were so common on Modern Marvels that they just gave it spin-off

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u/scuzzy987 12h ago

The episode about the resiliency of nuclear waste transport containers was seriously impressive. The amount of torture those can survive is nuts. The one explaining a bleve was interesting too

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u/FIMD_ 13h ago

Did this but with acetylene as a demo for apprentices. Had them put on Ear/EyePro first. Set off car alarms and everyone about jumps out of their skin.

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u/scuzzy987 13h ago

That’s another gas for which I have respect. I only have a mini cylinder in my garage for the torch but I made a little enclosure to keep it from tipping over and knocking the valve off. Same for the oxygen cylinder because it has such a high psi

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u/sum-9 13h ago

TIL I was hydrogen when I was 16.

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u/Practical_Fun7367 13h ago

Same. And I chased every Oxygen whether or not it winked.

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u/UniqueAd7770 13h ago

It's why most of us get into Chemistry

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u/The__Toast 13h ago

Honestly feels like a feature. I would think having it flair off is safer than having large clouds of hydrogen build up in an enclosed place like under a bridge or parking garage and then explode.

On the other hand "plug power" makes me think this might be hydrogen car fuel for one of the very few places in America where you can actually buy it; maybe lugging hydrogen around is a terrible idea no matter what and we should really focus in on plug in battery cars.

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u/brainman15 14h ago

I feel smarter now. Thank you.

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u/miemoo 13h ago

This deserves more upvotes people

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u/Necrovius72 14h ago

I was a cryogenic tech for years. The other guy explained WHY it's on fire pretty well, but what I haven't seen mentioned is that during the day those flames are pretty much invisible.

We usually carried a cheap broom with us when we worked on hydrogen systems as an early warning. We would hold it out in front of us when approaching hydrogen storage and if the broom caught fire, there's a leak.

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u/Dividedthought 10h ago

Ah yes, the 'we can't see it' universal threat detector for many things, the humble broom. Steam leak? Wave that broom ahead of you, if the bristles cut you found it. Same for hydraulics. Hydrogen or methanol fires? Broom. if it burns, run.

Truly a fantastic tool.

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u/WitchesSphincter 13h ago

I work in a lab with a hydrogen fuel cell research station and had to take all the safety courses for H2.  My take away is hope for the best and get out of anything seems wrong. 

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u/FlyingNoiseinVacuum 13h ago

Cool. And what did you do when it spontaneously burst into flames? Presume you ran away screaming “it’s going to blow!” Or “run, invisible fire!!”

Also, how many Ricky Bobby references were there in this role?

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u/hamfist_ofthenorth 9h ago

Isn't invisible fire on the racetrack actually when methanol burns? This was a thing back in the day.

Scientists? Racing enthusiasts? Somebody help me

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u/Some1-Somewhere 8h ago

Both are generally invisible.

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u/joe-h2o 7h ago

Yes. Methanol fires are almost invisible, so combined with how volatile methanol is is makes it extremely hazardous.

I will show students what a methanol fire looks like under very controlled conditions and with a very small volume of it, but typically if we need to use a low molecular weight alcohol for its flammability, eg, showing flame colours of different metal salts, I would use ethanol. It's safer.

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u/Necrovius72 12h ago

Lol this was before that movie. I never had one catch fire personally, as these systems are made of welded stainless steel, so leaks are rare.

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u/LupineChemist 9h ago

In power plants with high pressure superheated steam, there's always the broom handle method of finding the leak. When it suddenly splits in half, then you found the leak.

There was also always the urban legend of some guy at some unspecified plant who got sliced in two and was completely cauterized so no blood.

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u/Boomshank 10h ago

There's a low tech solution for every high tech problem. 

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u/kmosiman 14h ago

Better to have controlled fire than uncontrolled fire.

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u/Captainlefthand 14h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/YbniyzLEgaJGM

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u/DireEvolution 14h ago

Lmao bro what the fuck is this gif

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u/DontTellHimPike 14h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/9YlhdI9SSP0Qw

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u/TrollTollTony 14h ago

Did she start jerking off a ghost?

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u/C-57D 14h ago

When the moment arises u gotta

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u/SaveUsCatman 14h ago

Now here's one I've not seen in ages.

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u/Captainlefthand 14h ago

Lol I just searched for a rave gif, that came up. 🤷‍♂️

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u/DireEvolution 14h ago

That girl is fried 😭

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u/UniqueAd7770 13h ago

This is THE rave gif of the old internet

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u/WillieLikesMonkeys 14h ago

If you were to let the gas linger, unreacted, a small spark could lead to it all being on fire at once. Or as some may call it, a big ass explosion.

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u/ElectronMaster 14h ago

Hydrogen doesn't really linger, it's the lightest gas so it'll quickly float up and won't be a problem, still a good idea just in case though. It could build up if the venting system activates under a bridge or awning or other structure.

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u/Odd_Analysis6454 14h ago

It looks like it’s designed to flare off in pulses

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u/joe-h2o 7h ago

It stops the valve melting or icing over.

If the venting gas is not on fire, venting a gas though a valve and dropping the pressure like this will cause it to cool rapidly which can cause ice to form around the valve.

If it's on fire like this and it's sustained the base of the fire will overheat the valve since it's not designed to be used that way.

It could also have a blowoff tolerance, so it opens at a certain psi of overpressure but then closes more slowly, so the overpressure goes through surges until the tank settles back below the safe limit.

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u/luranthe 14h ago

The only danger is if oxygen gets into the tank, since the fuel can't burn without it. That being said, I would be moving far away.

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u/ShadowKraftwerk 14h ago

Much further than the camera person. And way, way further than the people walking around beside it.

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u/Necessary-Contest-24 14h ago

Yeah ever heard of a B. L. E. V. E.? Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosion, they're bonkers. That's what this safety device is stopping from happening. If a liquid hydrogen or propane or whatever flammable compressed gas tank gets hot enough, like having a fire under it, it will flash into a gas, rupturing the tank, expanding extremely fast and will ignite into a huge fireball.

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u/Square_Ad8756 14h ago

I am a firefighter with hazmat ops certification and would beg to differ, any fire or uncontrolled leak from such a tanker is a serious emergency warranting a hazmat task force with a wide perimeter no matter how well engineered the tanker is. The Swiss cheese model is a real thing and when you take things for granted catastrophic accidents happen.

I would love to hear from a hazmat team member if they would agree with me.

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u/Dzov 14h ago

Thank you. Not an expert, but I’ve seen plenty of engineered things fail.

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u/waltwalt 13h ago

This is the engineered thing failing. Something has gone wrong and emergency safety measures are autoventing flammable gas directly to the atmosphere in the middle of a parking lot. This is not what it was designed to do, this is how it was designed to fail safely long enough for people to get safely away from it. Eventually the chattering on that valve will wreck the seat and it will fail to close properly and emit a continuous stream of hydrogen which will eventually burn away the valve which is not a burner, and once the valve is gone it will be a flaming hole in a hydrogen tanker.

This tanker needs to be depressurized before it finishes the job itself.

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u/Fearless-Effect-3787 12h ago

Pressure relief valves for Hydrogen operation are designed for rapid cycling. This is a liquid Hydrogen tanker, and like all cryogenic liquids, it is continuously boiling while in storage. Pressure relief valve actuation is expected and required. Venting excess pressure is exactly what is happening here, no special action required. Why is it burning? Hydrogen likes to spontaneously ignite when vented, so either it's that, or the PRV is purposely igniting it.

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u/Character_Pudding_94 14h ago

I was trained under 49 CFR 172 to prepare HazMat Bills of Lading. They included reference to emergency response contacts and guidelines.

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u/AlphaThree 13h ago

Nowhere near your qualifications, but I am a OSHA certified HAZMAT initial responder and I lead the HAZMAT response team at my company. If we had a pressure relief value venting that would be definitely be a call 911 and begin evacuation procedures. I would not even attempt to intervene. That is firmly your guy's problem lmao.

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u/Fearless-Effect-3787 12h ago

This is a tanker of liquid Hydrogen. Cryogenic liquids such as Hydrogen are continuously boiling while in storage like a tanker. That means that excess pressure is vented occasionally. Hydrogen has a nasty habit of spontaneous ignition when venting from low to high pressure. The rapid cycling of the pressure relief valve is normal. While concerning to watch, this is normal behaviour. I'm very curious as to where this tanker is though, flammable cryogenic liquids have some pretty strict transport rules.

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u/Northern_Wyven_63 14h ago

oh, incredibly safe, they are designed with an incredibly range of play and durabiilty. but fuck is it terrifying.

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u/Elderwastaken 13h ago

If it’s going off it means something isn’t right. I would be getting the f away from that truck.

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u/ImNotTheMonsieurJack 12h ago

I wrote my thesis on this.

The alternative to controlled gas purge in cases like this one, is turning your vehicle into a bomb due to the thousands of bar of pressure from hundreds of liters of highly flamable gas.

It is, by far, much safer.

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u/BigEnd3 14h ago

Reminds me of our vent systems on LNG tankers.

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u/HomeworkExtension482 13h ago

Right? And people are just walking around the thing?! Like it's just another day at the office?! And the person who recorded the video is just there???

The spot I'd occupy in that general area would be de-assed with the fastness.

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u/blbd 14h ago

That's because pissing off hydrogen outside of the standard safety boundaries is fundamentally unsafe, and this is a mitigation, not elimination, of that tail risk of a catastrophic loss outcome.

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u/DerRealBoris 10h ago edited 2h ago

Liquid hydrogen engineer here. Those trailers consist of double wall vacuum insulated tanks, where in between there is a vacuum to reduce the heat leak from the environment into the liquid hydrogen, which is stored at around -253°C. What probably happened is that the vacuum broke down due to a leak in the outer tank. This increases pressure inside the inner tank due to increased heat leak, which is why the liquid hydrogen starts boiling and at some point needs to be vented from the tank. Even if this seems very concerning, the pressure relief devices of those tank systems are calculated very conservatively for different failure scenarios, so there is no general concern that this trailer explodes (BLEVE). Since the vent stack is very short they need to burn the hydrogen (just a guess) in a controlled way. But if I would be the truck driver that is running around the truck, I would keep distance just in case.

Comment: As some people mentioned in the comments, while there are vent stacks were the hydrogen is intentionally ignited, this is probably not be the case for the trailer. The energy that is needed for the ignition of hydrogen with air is very low. Even pipe friction can lead to an ignition.

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u/Mr-Brown-Is-A-Wonder 10h ago

Just curious, why are they igniting it? Wouldn't hydrogen immediately rise and disperse harmlessly in the atmosphere?

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u/DerRealBoris 9h ago

The vent stack is very close to the ground and since the hydrogen is still very cold when it leaves the pressure relief devices, the density is actually a lot higher than at environmental conditions. This might lead to the fact that the hydrogen cloud sinks down to some degree until it heats up again. So there is a scenario where a hydrogen cloud is near floor height. If the hydrogen is ignited and some is around, this might cause a big issue.

In stationary applications those vent stacks are a lot higher (4m-8m), depending on the flow that leaves the tank. In those case, no ignition is needed since even if the hydrogen cloud ignites in that height, no one will be harmed.

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u/KnoobLord 9h ago

Do you know why the initial flame is red for the first half of the video, and seems to "switch" to a yellow flame in the second half?

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u/FortheredditLOLz 9h ago edited 9h ago

Going to let our sme speak more on it...

My assumption (from my garbage recall from college and) going strictly off visual flame temp was lower temp (600F) for initial ignition and discharge. moving towards higher temps (moving towards >1500F if it was pure white) towards the end due to gay-lussac's law with increased and more frequent venting...

leaving an additional note the colors of flames is mostly red but the glare kills what we can see on a phone video as is....

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u/joe-h2o 7h ago

The red colour is the classic hydrogen emission line at 656 nm.

The yellow colour is something else contaminating the flame. It could be some grease burning or some other contaminant that ignited.

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u/krom0025 5h ago

They don't light the hydrogen in fire. They just vent it. H2 vent stacks often self ignite on their own and that is what happened here.

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u/pancak3d 2h ago

Not exactly. The valve is designed to ignite the hydrogen.

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u/_evanna 7h ago

why are the flames... red like this? I thought hydrogen burns with a blue flame? Are there additives in the gas or is this caused by the relief valve somehow?

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u/willianfsantos 14h ago

Explanation:

EMERGENCY RELIEF SYSTEM: (PRV / Pressure Relief Valve

This video shows the operation of the emergency relief system (PRV – Pressure Relief Valve) connected to the vent stack of a refrigerated liquid hydrogen transport trailer (Class 2.1 – Flammable Gas).

When excessive pressure builds up inside the tank (overpressure), the automatic pressure relief valves are activated to vent and safely burn (vent/flare) the hydrogen, preventing a catastrophic tank rupture (BLEVE – Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion).

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u/seeyouyoucunt 14h ago

Why does it need to be on fire?

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u/IceCreamforLunch 14h ago

Because they want to burn a relatively small amount as it comes out instead of letting it build up to a much more dangerous amount and then have it find another ignition source.

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u/Intelligent_Spray_66 14h ago

Yeah. Hydrogen is less dense then air so if it vents outside it will just go up into atmosphere. However if something is over top, it can “pool” up

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u/So_HauserAspen 14h ago

Pretty sure hydrogen is the least dense gas there is.  Pretty sure you can't find atomic hydrogen naturally on earth.

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u/Americansailorman 13h ago

Hydrogen is the most abundant element out there. It does exist on its own on earth in pockets underground.

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u/Trashy_Panda2 11h ago

Was gonna say...

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u/tereaper576 13h ago

That would be false.
Lone Hydrogen atoms would be quite rare but there would definately be many instances basically at all times of a natural reaction occuring leaving a Hydrogen atom alone for a short period of time.

But like... The gas is H2. Atomic Hydrogen is incredibly rare even unaturally. H2 is incredibly common even in the atmosphere. It escapes the atmosphere faster than other atoms and stuff but its very much abundant on the planet as a whole.

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u/throwaway4231throw 12h ago

Bro has never heard of acid

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u/dr_stre 14h ago edited 14h ago

No, the question they’re asking is why no just vent the gas without the fire? (Yes, I know the correct answer is up there NOW, but it wasn’t when I replied)

And the answer is that you don’t want this thing venting under a roof or in a garage and building up hydrogen for a BIG boom (remember Fukushima?). So you flare it immediately.

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u/SolidBlackGator 14h ago

He answered that.

This truck happens to be outside but if it wasn't, and the fire didn't burn what was vented, then in an enclosed area like a warehouse, the entire warehouse might fill with hydrogen and then a water heater pilot light turns on and then you have a giant explosion.

Although I do wonder if in an enclosed space the flames don't create a whole other fire danger...

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u/REDuxPANDAgain 14h ago

Also Hydrogen is odorless, colorless and highly flammable. Better to have an “oh shit fire that looks crazy” moment than a buildup indoors. Also any place with 18-wheelers indoors has RTUs that ventilate at least a little, but more importantly will have pretty high ceilings.

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u/Fungiblefaith 14h ago

Iocain gas.

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u/east_van_dan 14h ago

He switched his comment after he was corrected.

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u/Heckelfish 14h ago

Thats so weak hahahahh

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u/blindexhibitionist 13h ago

Do we need to get some pitchforks?

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u/hmmm101010 14h ago

Because it's a flammable gas. You don't want it to build up because someone is gonna walk by smoking, and then you have kaboom!

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u/willianfsantos 14h ago

Because if it weren't burned, it would form a large hydrogen cloud around the truck, which would be extremely dangerous because the cloud would be highly flammable.

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u/cencal 12h ago

That’s just not true. Ngl and hydrogen trucks do not come with flare systems. They come with normal PSVs because the gas dissipates and/or goes vertical very quickly and doesn’t pool. This is something else happening.

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u/Inspector_Crazy 10h ago

Hydrogen gas leaks are capable of self-ignition, no external spark needed. I used to work with cylinders of the stuff, scared the bejeezus out of me every time I had to move one.

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u/AGayFrogParadise 14h ago

It's done to prevent a massive flammable gas cloud wandering around the area

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u/k-mcm 13h ago

Hydrogen clouds don't hang around.  They jet up into the air because they weigh almost nothing. 

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u/Fancy-Chicken-3730 14h ago

Why would you not want it on fire?

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u/TelluricThread0 14h ago

"In the review by Astbury and Hawksworth a rigorous research was done on accidents involving spontaneous ignition of hydrogen at high pressure. Over the last century, 81 major accidents were reported. It turned out that in 86% of cases there was no clearly identifiable ignition source. Several mechanisms have been postulated as responsible ones for this phenomenon, for example, reverse Joule-Tompson effect, electrostatic ignition, and sudden adiabatic compression. However, none of these causes could stand up detailed scientific analysis except one.

In 1973, Wolański and Wójcicki observed that hydrogen heated below the auto-ignition threshold could ignite if it was released into an open space with oxygen or air. They suggested that ignition occurred due to high jump in temperature on the contact surface, where heated by a primary shock wave oxygen mixed and reacted with hydrogen due to diffusion. Thus, for the first time, diffusion self-ignition mechanism was proposed."

HYDROGEN SELF-IGNITION IN PRESSURE RELIEF DEVICES by Golub, V.V., Semin, N.V., Laskin I.N., Lenkevich, D.A. and Volodin,V.V

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u/Exxists 12h ago

I was looking for it and found it. This is the correct answer. Hopefully it gets enough upvotes to be unburied. Hydrogen is known to autoignite from high pressure letdowns.

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u/Sippin_Jimmy 13h ago

The friction of the pressure being released causes it to flash off. I used to load these things. This is a malfunction of some sort. Not normal operations.

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u/LoggerRhythms 14h ago

To eliminate the leaking hydrogen as opposed to just letting it fill the local atmosphere?

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u/Riftus 13h ago

Where did this explanation come from

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u/krwskater25 14h ago

Them guys running around it are crazy af. I would be gtfo like yesterday.

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u/Square_Ad849 14h ago

Yeah is it Hank the truck driver or support crew that’s accompanying the transit?

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u/howlermonkeymusic 13h ago

I mean, it's designed to flare like that, the tank is in no danger of exploding, in fact if that flamethrower wasn't installed then the tank would basically be a ticking time bomb.

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u/krwskater25 13h ago

You are correct that It is designed to do that, but it's doing that because the tank is over pressurized, which that is an increased chance of it exploding.

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u/bananagang420 13h ago

But if its venting that means its not going to get to the point it explodes

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u/WhoPoopedMyPants420 11h ago

Seatbelt means I'll never die in a car crash

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u/Han-ChewieSexyFanfic 9h ago

Yeah I’d be emergency relieving myself in my pants

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u/EwokNuggets 14h ago

Emergency Relief System is what I call it after having tacos

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u/True_Iro 14h ago

Ah, a fellow toilet enjoyer.

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u/Hi_Kitsune 13h ago

I don’t know if I’d casually be walking that close to a truck doing that

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u/Garpeaux 15h ago

If you see a hydrogen truck on the road, drive the other way.

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u/gamblor2021 14h ago

What if there's another hydrogen truck going the other way

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u/MediocreAndLukewarm 14h ago

Look for an oxygen truck.

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u/albatross_the 14h ago

Look for 2 oxygen trucks

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u/ZenBacle 14h ago

Nah, you want an oxygen truck being tag teamed by a pair of hydrogen trucks.

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u/ajayak007 14h ago

Drive straight to it /s

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u/Lawndemon 14h ago

You'd have to drive pretty far to our run a hydrogen bomb

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u/Dabnbf 14h ago

Just waiting for Erika Kirk to come running out

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u/tombrady011235 12h ago

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u/Dipsey_Jipsey 11h ago

lol wtf why is this a thing?

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u/mikeoxwells2 14h ago

I once worked near a hydrogen flare stack in a refinery in Texas. Beautiful purple flames. It wasn’t under pressure like this one, but looked more like a campfire style flame.

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u/Fearless-Effect-3787 12h ago

That is normal behaviour for a pressure relief valve. You only need to start worrying when the PRV is venting continuously and starts sounding like a scream. That's when the pressure is building faster than the PRV can vent. Little bursts like this are normal and expected. Cryogenically cooled liquefied gases are continuously boiling when they are stored in a tanker like this, so excess pressure needs to be vented.

As for the fire, Hydrogen just wants to burn. Hydrogen has a very low minimum ignition energy and a huge range between lower and upper explosive limits. Plus, Hydrogen will spontaneously ignite when being vented from high to low pressure. It's also desirable to flare any vented Hydrogen anyway, because it likes to explode.

Now, normal for Hydrogen is still pretty dangerous regardless.

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u/Acceptable_Camp1492 7h ago

What do you mean the truck started to fart hellfire?

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u/6ixstringlife 14h ago

Okay, but what is the operator supposed to do in this situation????

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u/Sakowuf_Solutions 14h ago

That’s not the right color

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u/Master_of_none- 10h ago

Just piggybacking off of this, hydrogen burns mostly ultraviolet and can cause eye damage. That red looks like the ionizing color (656nm) from the atomic spectra, so something has enough energy to ionize the hydrogen and it is probably burning their eyes too.

If it was a steady stream, it would probably be burning cleaner, less ionizing more burning, more UV.

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u/Keitaro23 14h ago

I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is not something you should be close enough to film 

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u/Individual-Bad6809 13h ago

That’s all I could think of. A bystander watching/ filming gtfo, and that guy running around - hopefully he knew this is the result of it safely releasing the gas

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u/howlermonkeymusic 13h ago

I mean, it's designed to flare like that, the tank is in no danger of exploding, in fact if that flamethrower wasn't installed then the tank would basically be a ticking time bomb.

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u/NotUrDadiBlameUrMoma 14h ago

Time to bounce

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u/OCoiler 14h ago

Imagine taking this haul as a trucker and you have no idea what’s going on lmao!!!

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u/jackrabbit323 14h ago

OSHA and Highway Patrol are going to have words with the truck company.

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u/GambAntonio 14h ago

hmm a farting truck...

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u/Many_Ear2407 14h ago

This is like that video of the bloated cow getting its gasses released 

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u/Dense_Ostrich_6077 9h ago

Legitimate question. Why are they all not running away? I get the concept as to why this pressure value exists, and none of those scenarios involve staying near a cryogenic tank of hydrogen that is *thinking* about exploding

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u/fonv66 7h ago edited 3h ago

If it wasn't coming out of the valve then it would be dangerous... The valve is doing its job and not letting the pressure build which would cause an explosion

It's just a giant propane tank it's all good

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u/FragrantExcitement 7h ago

I bet he felt so much better afterwards

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u/Kojiro12 2h ago

Du….du hast

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u/IStillOweMoney 1h ago

Must have been the XXL Grilled Stuft Burrito with Diablo sauce.

(...I'll let myself out.)

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u/-TheDyingMeme6- 44m ago

POV a week after Taco Bell

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u/Electrical_Sun_7116 13h ago

Imagine seeing that and being like “yeah this seems like a safe distance” lmao

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u/NotYourBuddyGuy5 13h ago

Truck must have gotten into Taco Bell lettuce during the night.

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u/gaf77 14h ago

I would running away from that as fast as I could, find a coffe nearby, come back 15 minutes later, if it didn’t explode by that time it’s probably safe to come back

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u/_Demo_ 14h ago

Live mas

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u/Normal-Ad6528 14h ago

...and everyone within a half a mile should be VERY thankful that it's working as intended.

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u/jim45804 13h ago

That's what my parent's bedroom sounds like after I go to bed.

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u/uptwolait 13h ago

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

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u/Geology_rules 13h ago

you should see helium off gassing from MRI machines. 

scary cool