In this public report, the key findings of a process safety study on water electrolysis is presented. The results of this project have been presented to the Netherlands Standardization Institute(NEN) and is used for the development of a dedicated National Technical Agreement (NTA).
This report is successor of the first report ‘Safety Aspects of Green Hydrogen Production on Industrial Scale’. It is the result of a more than two-year long project involving extensive cooperation with safety experts from Battolyser Systems, Equinor, Green Hydrogen Systems, HyCC, ISPT, John Cockerill, NEN, Ørsted, Plug Power, Royal HaskoningDHV, RWE, Shell, TNO, VoltH2, and Yara. The project was managed by the Institute for Sustainable Process Technology (ISPT).
Key findings
This report dives deeper into the technical safety risks, scenarios and design implications for electrolysis using Alkaline Water Electrolysis (AWE) and Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) technologies.
- Generic hazard scenarios and risk assessments
- Process safety management for electrolysers
- Effects of intermittent power supply on system degradation and safety
- Explosion and fire hazards specific to hydrogen and oxygen
- Review of Dutch ATEX guidelines (NPR7910-1) and their applicability to hydrogen
- Operational safeguards tailored to large-scale electrolysers
Our findings are supported by detailed bowtie analyses and hazop studies and can be applied across electrolyser technologies and system configurations — from gigawatt scale design.
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