The aim of the HyTunnel-CS project is to perform pre-normative research for safety of hydrogen driven vehicles and transport through tunnels and similar confined spaces (FCH-04-1-2018). The main ambition is to facilitate hydrogen vehicles entering underground traffic systems at risk below or the same as for fossil fuel transport. The specific objectives are: critical analysis of effectiveness of conventional safety measures for hydrogen incidents; generation of unique experimental data using the best European hydrogen safety research facilities and three real tunnels; understanding of relevant physics to underpin the advancement of hydrogen safety engineering; innovative explosion and fire prevention and mitigation strategies; new validated CFD and FE models for consequences analysis; new engineering correlations for novel quantitative risk assessment methodology tailored for tunnels and underground parking; harmonised recommendations for intervention strategies and tactics for first responders; recommendations for inherently safer use of hydrogen vehicles in underground transportation systems; recommendations for RCS. The objectives will be achieved by conducting inter-disciplinary and inter-sectoral research by a carefully built consortium of academia, emergency services, research and standard development organisations, who have extensive experience from work on hydrogen safety and safety in tunnels and other confined spaces. The complementarities and synergies of theoretical, numerical and experimental research will be used to close knowledge gaps and resolve technological bottlenecks in safe use of hydrogen in confined spaces. The project outcomes will be reflected in appropriate recommendations, models and correlations could be directly implemented in relevant RCS (UN GTR#13, ISO/TC 197, CEN/CLC/TC 6, etc.). HyTunnel-CS will reduce over-conservatism, increase efficiency of installed safety equipment and systems to save costs of underground traffic systems.

In the proposed project PRESLHY pre-normative research for the safe use of cryogenic liquid hydrogen (LH2) will be performed. The consortium consists of European key organizations from the International Association for Hydrogen Safety HySafe with the relevant background related to LH2 safety research and will be coordinated by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT. The work program duly refers to the outcomes of Research Priorities Workshops commonly organized by IA HySafe, EC JRC, and US DoE. Via HySafe and IEA HIA it will be aligned with other international activities also dedicated to safety issues of LH2, in particular with current research done at Sandia National Laboratory SNL. The results will help to improve the knowledge base and state-of-the-art, which will be reflected in appropriate recommendations for development or revision of specific international standards. So, the main objectives of PRESLHY are to identify critical knowledge gaps and to close these by developing and validating new appropriate models. Based on these results and with the better understanding of the relevant phenomena, specific engineering correlations will be derived which will help to evaluate mitigation concepts and safety distance rules for LH2 based technologies. The derived models and correlations could be directly implemented in new standards ans/or will fill current gaps in risk assessment tools, like the US supported hydrogen risk assessment toolkit HyRAM, and increase their validated scope of application. In general it will remove over-conservative requirements for innovative solutions, allows for cost-efficient safer design and for internationally harmonised, performance based standards and regulations. These objectives are fully aligned with Euroepean scientific-technological interests and strategies and very important to further the safe introduction and scale-up of hydrogen as an energy carrier.