Safety of hydrogen as vehicle fuel

David Gårsjö and Mårten Niklasson of Royal Institute of Technology Chemical Engineering and Technology, Sweden, recently presented a report on Safety Issues with Hydrogen as a Vehicle Fuel (PDF 1.8 Mb) at a hydrogen fuel cell buss seminar which I attended. It is a very interesting report. The English extended abstract can be found on pages 100-113 in the PDF file. The conclusion starts with the following: “Compared with other fuels, hydrogen is safer in some aspects, while other aspects make it more hazardous [than conventional fuel]. As a whole, it is comparable with petrol, and with measures taken for safety even safer than petrol. If it would be the other way around, i.e. petrol would be the “new” fuel to be introduced and hydrogen already established, petrol would probably not be accepted as a fuel. If petrol is an accepted standard today, hydrogen could be an accepted standard tomorrow. “