Critical Review of Hydrogen Safety Assessment Tools: Indian Perspective

Hydrogen is widely regarded as a potentially viable solution for mitigating climate change and satisfying the growing need for sustainable energy sources. Its unique characteristics lead to both opportunities and challenges in its utilization. Significant safety concerns arise owing to its inherent properties and associated potential hazards. To ensure a smooth transition to a hydrogen economy, it is necessary to ensure its widespread acceptance among different stakeholders. This requires assurance of its safety and reliability throughout its value chain. A comprehensive systems safety analysis is strongly advocated for such a complex problem with uncertainties. It is crucial to create and share knowledge about its characteristics and behavior under the different scenarios likely to occur during its deployment in various sectors. A carefully tailored Quantitative Risk Assessment toolkit to facilitate the assessment of hazards and risks by stakeholders, evolution by consensus of a national risk acceptance criteria, maintaining an accessible database of failure rates, accidents/ incidents/ near misses, use of computational fluid dynamics, virtual reality, and augmented reality technologies for safety training and risk communication, as well as the use of big data, data analytics and digital technologies like virtual and e-labs to improve operational efficiency and safety, are the need of the hour. This paper reviews the work done in these areas globally and attempts to highlight existing gaps and a way forward for the country. The paper also reviews various evidence-based and risk-informed approaches adopted globally, in the development of regulations, codes and standards for hydrogen safety and the reforms needed in the regulatory framework to enable India to meet its goals of becoming a global hydrogen hub.