Scientific Principles of e-Laboratory of Hydrogen Safety

Education and training are crucial for provision of safety of fuel cell and hydrogen (FCH) systems and infrastructure. The European project “Novel Education and Training Tools based on digital Applications related to Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology” (NET-Tools) is developing digital platform and providing online contemporary tools and information services for education and training within FCH sector. The project is delivering an innovative platform, influencing robust and effective learning while offering a unique blend of novel digital tools. The platform has two main pillars, i.e. e-Education and e-Laboratory. The essential part of e-Laboratory is a suit of hydrogen safety tools. The aim of this paper is to present scientific principles behind the hydrogen safety engineering tools of the e-Laboratory. The principles describe or predict a range of natural phenomena in unignited releases, jet-fires, deflagrations, blastwaves and fireball etc. They summarize and explain a large collection of facts determined by experiments and supported by physics and mathematics. Principles are tested based on their ability to predict the results of future experiments and possible safety related scenarios to calculate flame lengths,
concentrations, overpressures, hazard distances, etc., and supported by peer-reviewed publications.