Fire and Explosion At Hydrogen Station Near Rochester Airport 357
RossR writes "There was a hydrogen fire and explosion at a renewable fuel station used by government vehicles near Rochester's airport. The nearby freeway and airport were closed resulting in diverted flights. This may the first major incident at a hydrogen vehicle refueling station. GM has their major fuel cell development center nearby, in the town of Honeoye Falls. The fire occurred when the 18-wheeler tractor truck was transferring hydrogen to the station. The airport press conference reported that airport firefighters responded first and initially waited on the scene deciding how to respond. No news yet if the hard to see flames of hydrogen combustion contributed to this delay. The fueling station is also adjacent to a NY State Trooper station, and a firefighting training facility is a few blocks away."
RossR also provides a Police/FD Radio transcript. Luckily, no one was killed, and only two injured, including the driver.
A close call but we made it this time (Score:4, Funny)
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, but hydrogen doesn't explode or even burn! Half a million slashdotters insisted as much, and profusely insisted that the Hindenburg really burned because of a "thermite" or "rocket fuel" skin. ;)
The reality is that hydrogen is an exceedingly flammable gas, much moreso than hydrocarbons, with 1/10th the ignition energy required many times the fuel-air combustible mixture range, and -- unlike hydrocarbons -- readily undergoes deflagration-to-detonation transitions in unconfined spaces. It's also extremely prone to leaks, burns largely clear, and tends to pool in fuel-air mixtures underneath overhangs. To top it all off, it's stored under immense pressure.
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and if you inhale dihydrogen monoxide at room temperature, the effects can be lethal!
Look, if you want to store energy, there's going to be some energy in whatever you store it in. Gasoline burns pretty readily as well, explodes in confined spaces and it has this annoying tendency to pool around ground level when it's leaked rather than going up into the atmosphere. (It's also carcinogenic, unlike hydrogen). Diesel fuel doesn't explode, but it still burns, and worse, it doesn't evaporate at room temperature so when spilled, it stays there drastically reducing friction on the road surface until something washes it off. Lithium batteries can cause some nasty, difficult-to-extinguish fires. Nuclear fuel rods... well..
There's no perfectly safe way to store a bunch of energy. I don't think it's possible even in theory.
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, if you want to store energy, there's going to be some energy in whatever you store it in.
Hydrogen gas, however, is a particular pain in the ass. It eats through rubber seals, and the energy density (at STP) is so low that you have to store it at immense pressure to be useful for transportation.
Storing hydrogen as a metal hydride with catalyzed release is a very different story, and might be one of the safest means of high density energy storage. I hope work on that technology is progressing (despise the fact that Bush once endorsed it), as it could well become the "magic battery" we've been looking for.
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:5, Insightful)
See? SEE?! This is what happens when we politicize Science to Hell and back: some unpopular politician endorses it and we assume by default that this is grounds to discredit it. This is Slashdot, people. Evaluating the merits of the technology irrespective of politics should be the rule and not the exception.
Where are our values?
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:5, Funny)
Where are our values?
I don't know, but we'll find them when we find our keys.
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See? SEE?! This is what happens when we politicize Science to Hell and back: some unpopular politician endorses it and we assume by default that this is grounds to discredit it. This is Slashdot, people. Evaluating the merits of the technology irrespective of politics should be the rule and not the exception.
Where are our values?
I agree, in general. But if someone is wrong 99 times, should I take the time to investigate the 100th claim?
Regardless, this becomes a none issue if we start listening to scientists about science, and not politicians. But scientists tend to have less public exposure than politicians, and public exposure leads to public policy decisions. And doesn't it seem pretty apparent that the far right gets science wrong way more often than the far left? It isn't unreasonable to totally disregard what a neo-con/te
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, if I were to undergo a fuel tank fire/explosion, I'd much rather have hydrogen in the tank.
Huh? Liquid fuel is a hell of a lot safer. Seriously, how often do you hear about massive fires and explosions involving gas stations and/or gasoline-fueled vehicles? Answer: you don't. It's a fairly mature and comparatively safe technology ... the real danger is the average American driver. Conversely, anyone who thinks a tank of pressurized, highly-flammable gas is a good thing in an automobile is nuts. Frankly, I feel the same way about big lithium-ion battery packs in cars: I'm waiting for a Prius to crash into a bridge siding and have a piece of rebar spike the battery.
The GP is right: if we're going to use hydrogen as an automotive fuel we need a better way to store it. Pressure tanks just don't cut it, not with hydrogen.
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Huh? Liquid fuel is a hell of a lot safer. Seriously, how often do you hear about massive fires and explosions involving gas stations and/or gasoline-fueled vehicles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire [wikipedia.org]
(I used to work sufficiently close to this plant that I could see these tanks from my desk)
A hydrogen leak probably wouldn't have ignited (would have dispersed too quickly). If it had ignited would probably not have exploded (outside so it's pretty hard to get enough H2 in one place) and would probabl
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I was only giving helium as an example of a gas that's hard to handle. Small molecules => leaks like hell. Hydrogen is of course worse, but helium is no picnic.
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:5, Insightful)
1) CNG is much safer than hydrogen -- lower pressures, much greater ignition energy req, much narrower fuel-air burn ratios, no DTD transition in unconfined spaces, no metal fatigue, no seeping through almost anything, etc.
2) CNG vehicles *are* a lot less save than gasoline vehicles. Even with how limited use it's gotten so far, there are tons of reports of huge CNG-vehicle accidents (mainly on CNG busses). Here's what happens when a CNG car burns versus a gasoline car. [cleanmpg.com] Several cars were burned by arson here. Tell me if you can spot which one was CNG. ;)
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Hey, a Beryllium slurry stores way more energy than gasoline. Should we all drive cars powered by burning a beryllium slurry?
The best argument against hydrogen is aluminium. Aluminium stores energy slightly more efficiently, has no explosion hazards, has similar energy densities to gasoline, and is made on a large scale. The aluminium fuel cell is also 100 times cheaper than a hydrogen fuel cell. And that's with what? Probably less than a 1000th the money spent on the hydrogen boondogle.
But overall, I think electric will win out. Have you seen the new Sanyo Eneloop NiMH? 2 times the volumetric energy density of an A123 lithi
Re:A close call but we made it this time (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody ever said otherwise... but surely you'd agree there are safer ways to store energy?
Most of everything else you said falls into the "not quite" category of truthfulness, too. For example, gasoline explosions are fairly rare in practice, and diesel fuel spilled on a roadway is not exceptionally slippery (and if it is, my experience is this is the diesel dissolving the tars and heavy oils in the asphalt - which happens with gasoline too.)
=Smidge=
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In this fire at the Rochester airport, two people were injured with some surface burns, even though a tankful burned and consumed an entire pressurized container truck. I saw no evidence of any other damage, it didn't burn the nearby containers of jet fuel, no firefighters were injured, no smoke inhalation.
If this had been petrofuel, the damage would probably have been a lot worse. Petrofuel sticks to stuff, doesn't disperse, makes lots of toxic smoke, is toxic in its own right.
Besides, nobody claims that h
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In this fire at the Rochester airport, two people were injured with some surface burns
Injured "with some surface burns"? The driver suffered second degree burns on his face. Want to see what that looks like? Link [burnsurgery.com] (not the same person, but the same condition). There was nobody else at the station at the time. The other person who was burned was at a Burger King -- across a large parking lot and a major road, then across the Burger King's parking lot. She was flash burned.
Had this been in a residential
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Yes, 2nd degree face burns are "some surface burns", as are "flash burns". I used to work full time at a large NYC area hospital that is the region's burn center (downstate excluding NYC), and I know what burns look like. I know that people with gasoline burns have third degree burns, limbs charred off. Worse, I know that petrofuel fires do burn for "a while", all the while putting smoke in everyone's lungs and mucous membranes, which is what usually kills or overcomes people then killed by the fire. I also
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Yes, dear...
My high school lab partner and I mixed hydrogen and chlorine in a vessel and showed it was so unstable that sunlight would ignite it. No, we didn't use very much of either, as it was pretty energetic, and gave a nice pop each trial. we popped several times to prove taking it out of the dark box was the trigger. We did manage to pop it once with rough handling, but I think the lid coming off the box caused that one.
And yes, we underestimated the amount of chlorine we generated for the experime
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As to the Hindenburg, not a single person was harmed by the burning hydrogen which was up and away moments after the storage cells ruptured.
Well, seeing as it was up and away in a FIREBALL that melted metal in under a minute before dissipating, causing molten beams to fall on people, one could argue it was the falling molten girders that killed people, not the fireball that molten-ed the falling girders. http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/myths#advocates [airships.net]
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When the Hindenburg burned, huge amounts of its unburned skin landed in pieces all over the landing site -- self-extinguished by the winds from the fire. The skin has a burn rate of centimeters per second where it can be sustained. The Hindenburg burned at a rate of *meters* per second. The amount of skin compared to the amount of hydrogen was miniscule.
Hydrogen burns in almost any fuel-air mixture -- if I remember right, it's something along the lines of 4% to 70%. It mixes with air incredibly rapidly
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My father was a refinery manager. Even with the vast amounts of oil and natural gas they had there, the proportionally small amounts of hydrogen (used for the cat crackers and hydrocrackers) led to the most horror stories.
Gasoline vapors do not pool anywhere close to the degree that hydrogen does, as gasoline vapors break down over time, are heavy, and require a very specific fuel-air mix to burn. Here, just to make it easy: how about you go compare NASA's safety handling guides for JP1 with their guide f
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Autoignition temperature != energy of ignition. H2 = 0.017mJ. Gasoline: 0.20mJ. They're two different parameters. You can put a vial of nitroglycerine in a pot of boiling water and it won't go off (autoignition temperature = 270 [google.com]C -- similar to gasoline), but it only takes the tiniest amount of ignition energy to set it off.
Hydrogen is *incredibly* sensitive to being ignited by tiny static charges.
God damn it... (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Ouch (Score:2)
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Funny)
Too soon?
Like there's never been a GAS STATION fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone will probably try to use this to say hydrogen is dangerous. I'd like to remind you gasoline is dangerous
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Someone will probably try to use this to say hydrogen is dangerous. I'd like to remind you gasoline is dangerous
Yes gasoline storage is dangerous, but it is magnitudes easier and safer, for now, to contain gasoline than it is to contain hydrogen.
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Gasoline has this unpleasant habit of spreading around at ground level even in vapor form. Hydrogen goes strait up.
Gas is defiantly cheaper and easier to store, but it is quite likely that in the event of a fire, it will be the more dangerous fuel.
Re:Like there's never been a GAS STATION fire (Score:5, Insightful)
You really think that if it had been a gasoline tanker that blew up, the damages would have been even lighter?
This accident goes a long way towards showing how safe hydrogen is compared to the alternatives. Despite the much higher energy per volume, the damage caused is less, because of the WAY it explodes: When the oxygen in the air around the hydrogen is used up (which is almost immediately), there's no way for it to burn, and the much lighter than air gas rises up until it finds more oxygen to react with.
Which is why the truck driver is still alive. I am quite certain he wouldn't have been if this had been gasoline, propane or ethanol.
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This accident goes a long way towards showing how safe hydrogen is compared to the alternatives.
Unfortunately, I don't think that is the message that most people are going to get from this. Likely they'll get the more sensational message of; "All they were doing is changing trucks and the whole thing exploded. See how dangerous that stuff is!"
Once upon a time I was a strong supporter of hydrogen powered cars, but not so much any more. The problem is that you have the danger of high pressure along with th
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Huh? Were you referring to hydrogen?
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Re:Like there's never been a GAS STATION fire (Score:5, Informative)
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What happens to the water between the time it is drawn from a reservoir and filtered and the time it gets to the tap? What kind of machine does it go through? What is it and its pipes made of? What is it lubricated with? What were the machines washed with? How often do they clean the water tower? What halogens were intentionally introduced in the production of the water? How many complex hydrocarbon will leach out of the piping? They can't filter those out. Same with the plumbing in your house. What happens
Re:Like there's never been a GAS STATION fire (Score:4, Funny)
And people wonder why I only drink filtered or bottled water.
Is it because you're worried about your precious bodily fluids? That's why I only drink grain alcohol and rainwater.
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Yes, but the range of explosive air-fuel ratios for hydrogen is much, much wider than gasoline. It's why gas station attendants of the pat often smoked but rarely blew themselves up.
Hydrogen has it's advantages - for example, it doesn't hand around long. Then again, you can't smell it unless they add oderant to it like LPG (do they?). I'm not sure which is really "better" though.
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Someone will probably try to use this to say hydrogen is dangerous. I'd like to remind you gasoline is dangerous
People are going to get killed. Hydrogen adoption will be blamed. Hydrogen advocates that have never condescended to cut the legacy fuels the least bit of slack will stand by quietly while the hydrogen industry makes the exact same excuses that the oil/coal/nuclear industries use to explain away their bodies. The real world is a nasty bitch. Welcome!
Re:Like there's never been a GAS STATION fire (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's why gasoline stations blow up every day, right?
How many consecutive days have hydrogen stations exploded? What are we up to now, one?
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How many consecutive days have hydrogen stations exploded? What are we up to now, one?
If we put together some sort of useful metric, we might learn something... if we had useful data. Miles traveled on each, time period, number of explosions. I have a feeling that gasoline will compare favorably but I'm just making stuff up.
What is the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
with calling Hydrogen "renewable fuel"? It still has to be generated - and most of the energy we use to extract Hydrogen comes from burning fossil fuels.
Now, if we could get electric generation down to solar/wind/geothermal/nuclear (and we NEED nuclear, because there's no way solar/wind/geothermal can equate to even 25% of our current use, let alone what increased population will need), maybe. But it's still lossy as fuck making hydrogen.
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Yes, it's hard to make someone with less than an 8th grade understanding of science realize that hydrogen is a storage medium, not an energy source. That, sadly, leaves out a good bit of the US - and I suspect a large fraction of the rest of the world's population as well.
Re:What is the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's hard to make someone with less than an 8th grade understanding of science realize that hydrogen is a storage medium, not an energy source. That, sadly, leaves out a good bit of the US - and I suspect a large fraction of the rest of the world's population as well.
By that logic there was only ever one energy source in existence, the Big Bang. Even the sun is just a huge ball of hydrogen and few other things that was all created long ago and will one day run out.
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WOOOOSH...
Try again.
The "logic" is that petroleum based products are made from a source that we find, separate, treat, and distribute. Compared to hydrogen which we separate and concentrate from naturally replenishing sources. We won't run out in our timescale. And not just for the abundance but for how we are using it. Look up a fuel cell and compare it with an ICE. Different methods are used for the extraction of energy. One is a storage system like a rechargeable battery; the other is a one way rapid oxi
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Fossil fuels themselves are a form of solar energy, from sunshine that hit the Earth over millions of years and got stored in a process involving plants growing, being eaten, and the plants and the critters that ate them both dying and decomposing into oil and coal. The only real problem with fossil fuels is that there is a limited amount of this conveniently pre-stored solar power lying about, and using it the way we do releases pollutants and many of the things like carbon dioxide that were sequestered b
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Yes, and?
So what WOULD you consider a renewable energy source if this isn't one (according to the OP)?
The OP suggested that "solar/wind/geothermal" power were renewable energy sources, and that hydrogen wasn't. I was pointing out that at a large scale NONE of these are renewable.
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Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?.
Well about half the world is below average. ;-)
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Unfortunately it takes somebody with slightly more than an 8th grade understanding of science to realize that gasoline is also nothing more than a storage medium too, and not really an energy source.
Point of fact: Far more energy goes into the processing, refining, and transportation of gasoline than is ever extracted from it in the form of pure heat alone (much less propulsion or "useful work") when it is burned in an internal combustion engine.
Both hydrogen and gasoline are fuel sources that allow "porta
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I was under the impression that when people talking about "Hydrogen" as a renewable fuel source they normally meant Methane, a very renewable combustable gas which features hydrogen.
But - as a little side note, Hydrogen gas DOES occur naturally, just not a whole lot on our planet, or when it does it escapes the atmosphere. But there are tons of nebulae* out there featuring H2 as is. It's as renewable as the Sun is, anyways, we just haven't figured out how yet.
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* almost forgot. Is Nebulae the proper plural form of Nebula? or is it just Nebulas?
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I was under the impression that when people talking about "Hydrogen" as a renewable fuel source they normally meant Methane ...
I believe that is natural gas not hydrogen.
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Do you really think a civilization that had the ability to travel light-years to reach a nebula would really have a need to harvest hydrogen to burn up in wasteful chemical reactions?
A nomadic one, yes. Are you presuming that they have unlocked FTL travel or something? Hydrogen has some very specific properties, in its elemental state and in any compound it ends up in - which makes it valuable. Suppose Hydrogen became the only resource we needed because we could engineer any compound out of simple Hydrogen Molecules
Re:What is the idea (Score:4, Informative)
This term, "renewable", you keep using it, I do no think it means what I think you think it means.
A "renewable" fuel is a fuel that we can make more of when we need it. It doesn't mean it's something we have to find in a ready state in nature. Hydrogen IS renewable. 100% renewable. We can make shitloads more of it, and you can't differentiate manufactured hydrogen from the stuff you'd find if we ever found it.
Unfortunately, renewable does not mean readily-available. It just means we can make more. All we need is an energy source. And that is the problem with hydrogen.
Hydrogen is, in essence, a battery with infinite recharges. You can separate it from water all day long, then burn it and re-integrate it with oxygen and have water again. It just takes shitloads of energy to separate it.
Hydrogen is not a freely-available fuel in any quantities that make a difference, but it is a completely renewable one. It is not, has never been, and will never be an energy source, but no renewable fuels are energy sources. They are ways to store energy in such a way that it can be practically used for fuel. You still need the energy.
Re:What is the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
A "renewable" fuel is a fuel that we can make more of when we need it. It doesn't mean it's something we have to find in a ready state in nature. Hydrogen IS renewable. 100% renewable. We can make shitloads more of it, and you can't differentiate manufactured hydrogen from the stuff you'd find if we ever found it.
By your definition gasoline is also a renewable fuel source. CO2 can be combined with hydrogen and oxygen to build hydrocarbons. The simpler the hydrocarbon the easier it is, but once you have methane it is just more steps to more complex hydrocarbons. It just a matter of how much energy you are willing to spend to create it.
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All very true. Thank you.
It got me thinking though. I've never seen a solar collector as efficient as a field of sugar beets. ;D
H can be generated from water and sunlight ... (Score:3, Interesting)
with calling Hydrogen "renewable fuel"? It still has to be generated - and most of the energy we use to extract Hydrogen comes from burning fossil fuels ... But it's still lossy as fuck making hydrogen.
That is true today. However various universities are researching the generation of hydrogen using biological processes, organism + water + sunlight --> H.
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As a side note making hydrogen is easy, it's a major by-product of a lot of a lot of refining processes. If there was money to be made from hydrogen so much of it probably wouldn't be sent up the flare, a process called economic flaring which everyone frowns upon when done with hydrocarbons, but no one cares less about since hydrogen burns quite cleanly.
Re:What is the idea (Score:4, Insightful)
We can make oil, but it's not economical, at least not for use as a fuel.
We're actually closer to making economically viable, algae-produced "oil" than we are to making economically viable, safe-to-use hydrogen...
How do you put out a hydrogen fire? (Score:2)
If the byproduct of a hydrogen fire is water, does it put itself out?
Does water do any good? The spray can both cool fire and reduce oxygen, but how does that work on a hydrogen fire?
Only half :-)
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Hydrogen has a tendency to explode, not to burn slowly like a common fuel fire, where only the vapors burn.
Danger is known (Score:3, Interesting)
This trail has HUGE signs saying (someting like) HYDROGEN FUELING STATION - RUN AWAY IF ALARM ACTIVATED
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What else would someone do upon hearing an alarm at a fueling station?
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Re:Danger is known (Score:4, Insightful)
What else would someone do upon hearing an alarm at a fueling station?
I'm sure some would reach for their phone/ipod to begin recording video.
Cause is under investigation? (Score:2)
I am surprised that this type of an "accident" is able to occur. Did someone forget to cap something? Was someone smoking? I would hope that this kind of process would be somewhat failsafe.
Re:Cause is under investigation? (Score:4, Funny)
Felt this from 2 miles away (Score:4, Interesting)
It was actually kind of scary, my whole office building felt & heard this from two miles away. I can't imagine what it would have been like to see up close.
It wasn't until a while later that we found out what had happened, though. Luckily, I hear that there was only one injury though.
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Weird, I'm about 1.5 miles away and didn't feel / hear anything. Didn't even know it happened until I read this story on ./
Re:Felt this from 2 miles away (Score:4, Informative)
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Burger King worker? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm wondering how this BK worker got hurt... did she lean too far out of the window and fall?
Re:Burger King worker? (Score:4, Informative)
Considering the usual size of a BK worker, I'd be more worried about the ground being hurt if she fell out of the window.
Re:Burger King worker? (Score:4, Informative)
The press conference said she had ear pain.
Loud boom (Score:2)
Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike materials that contain their own oxidizers, pure hydrogen will do basically nothing outside of the conditions that the fusion kiddies are working with. It needs to mix with air first. However, it is also substantially lighter than air, and would thus rise fairly quickly out of any non-sealed area. If you had a big hydrogen leak, burning, you'd presumably have a rising column of hydrogen, gradually mushrooming, surrounded by localized pockets of combustion in areas where turbulence had created a critical mixture of fuel, air, and temperature. That must have been an odd sight.
The "explosion" bit suggests that either there are other chemicals on site in fair quantity(quite possible, if the hydrogen is being generated locally in some way) or somebody foolishly built a confined area for the hydrogen to build up in when it leaked...
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
All combustible gases I know of are stored without their oxidizers mixed in. (Not so for all solid fuels I know of, but we're not talking about solid fuels.) Probably because people who store combustible gases like to live.
And they all burn in roughly the same way, with a plume of fire as the oxygen mixes with the fuel, usually as it rises.
Hydrogen is the same, but since hydrogen is very light it rises very fast. Like your average hollywood explosion, played back at 2-3X normal speed.
And while it's a light-yellow flame, it's not invisible.
I can still see a couple of reasons for firemen to stay away from it after the initial explosion:
1. there might be other tanks that could explode, and shrapnel of any size can ruin your day
2. there might be other chemicals and materials involved making using just one firefighting method unworkable
3. there might be more hydrogen in the tank that's still leaking out, if the tank had a leak and not a big rupture
4. there might not be anyone on the truck who's allowed to fight a hydrogen fire, even if everyone knows how to
5. the safest thing may be to let it burn out the supply in the leaking tank
6. it might backfire into the leaking tank as the tank runs low, and then you're looking at shrapnel issues again
Okay. More than a couple.
Piss poor planning (Score:5, Funny)
Turns out the hydrogen refueling facility was adjacent to an oxygen storage facility.
The zoning board is currently in hot water over this mistake.
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"Hard to see flames" (Score:3, Interesting)
No news yet if the hard to see flames of hydrogen combustion contributed to this delay.
So, you'd think if they went to the trouble of building this that the local fire department would have been involved and procured the necessary equipment, say a pair of night vision goggles so that a man on the truck could see the flames.
Outfitting each firefighter with the right training and equipment won't be cheap, but neither are ladder trucks.
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Infrared goggles, not amplified light goggles. Both can be considered "night vision" as they allow vision in low-light situations.
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The airport's Fire Rescue squad responded first, maybe they didn't get the training. You'd think they'd give it to all likely first responders, but who knows. Government bureaucracy is often about doing the minimum you can: "Huh, regulation says we gotta get special training and equipment for the Fire Dept... what's minimum we can spend doing that and still be legal?"
Course the submitter was just speculating, so maybe that wasn't eh problem at all.
Better than gas fire! (Score:2)
Hydrogen burns in a much more controlled manor compared to gasoline. So I'm not surprised they took a bit of a wait and see attitude.
Here's the station - a hydrogen boondoggle (Score:3, Insightful)
The fueling station has a web site. [greenmonroe.org] They offer hydrogen, compressed natural gas, bio-diesel, and ethanol options.
Only one (1) vehicle used hydrogen from that station - a fuel cell powered 2008 Chevy Equinox [chevrolet.com] from GM's now-concluded "Project Driveway".
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etc etc
Almost certainly the tank failed mechanically (Score:3, Interesting)
The Equinox fuel-cell vehicles have three high-pressure tanks, that can be filled up to 10,000 psi (more than 3x what a SCUBA tank pressure is)
One of those tanks failing will make a big boom! The fire, if there was one, would probably burn out almost immediately, as the hydrogen will disperse quickly and then got straight up fast.
There's a nice bit in "Dark Sun" about filling the Ivy Mike device with dueterium. All the leftover was burned, and made a roaring news but didn't have any visible fire.
Thad
Where are the stats??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fox news needs to figure out how to blame Obama and CNN needs to find a way to blame the oil industry?
Re:Geeze (Score:4, Insightful)
yes, and they both want to blame BP separately.
Re:Geeze (Score:5, Funny)
Let me help them with that:
CNN: Look at this fancy floating pie chart that looks like something out of Star Wars! We are sleek and modern! You want to watch us! Oh, and there was an explosion today in Rochester....
MSNBC: Hydrogen fueling facility explodes. Tune in tonight for Countdown as Keith Olbermann explains why this is really George W. Bush's fault.
Fox: Hydrogen fueling facility explodes. Are the socialist policies of Barack Hussein Obama and Nancy Pelosi to blame?
Local news: Hydrogen fueling facility explodes on [street]. No word yet on damage or casualties. In other news, please tune in to the end of our broadcast to find out how [common household product] could be KILLING YOUR FAMILY.
Slashdot today: Fire and explosion At Hydrogen Station Near Rochester Airport
Slashdot one week from now: Fire and explosion At Hydrogen Station Near Rochester Airport
Slashdot one month from now: Fire and explosion At Hydrogen Station Near Rochester Airport
Re:Geeze (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out the more reputable news outlets:
Comedy Central: A hydrogen fueling station exploded, forming a huge *bleep* fireball! The most likely cause: Bears.
Onion News Network: Dick Cheney claimed responsibility for the destruction of a hydrogen fueling station. "After spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives getting the oil in Iraq, I didn't want those stupid hippies coming up with a cheap and safe alternative," said Cheney in a press conference this morning.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Rochester, you insensitive clod...
Actually, you're dead on. The 10 o'clock news said the explosion was near Scott St., and then proceeded with (I kid you not) a story about a four-year-old who wore too many Silly Bands for too long and had sore skin because of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)