IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v17y2024i6p1350-d1355324.html

Hydrogen Safety Challenges: A Comprehensive Review on Production, Storage, Transport, Utilization, and CFD-Based Consequence and Risk Assessment

Author

Listed:
  • Marcella Calabrese

    (Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy
    Plant & Process Technology, Saipem SpA, Via Luigi Russolo 5, 20138 Milan, Italy)

  • Maria Portarapillo

    (Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy)

  • Alessandra Di Nardo

    (Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy)

  • Virginia Venezia

    (Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy
    Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture, University of Naples Federico II, Via Claudio 21, 80125 Naples, Italy)

  • Maria Turco

    (Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy)

  • Giuseppina Luciani

    (Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy)

  • Almerinda Di Benedetto

    (Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy)

Abstract

This review examines the central role of hydrogen, particularly green hydrogen from renewable sources, in the global search for energy solutions that are sustainable and safe by design. Using the hydrogen square, safety measures across the hydrogen value chain—production, storage, transport, and utilisation—are discussed, thereby highlighting the need for a balanced approach to ensure a sustainable and efficient hydrogen economy. The review also underlines the challenges in safety assessments, points to past incidents, and argues for a comprehensive risk assessment that uses empirical modelling, simulation-based computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) for hydrogen dispersion, and quantitative risk assessments. It also highlights the activities carried out by our research group SaRAH (Safety, Risk Analysis, and Hydrogen) relative to a more rigorous risk assessment of hydrogen-related systems through the use of a combined approach of CFD simulations and the appropriate risk assessment tools. Our research activities are currently focused on underground hydrogen storage and hydrogen transport as hythane.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcella Calabrese & Maria Portarapillo & Alessandra Di Nardo & Virginia Venezia & Maria Turco & Giuseppina Luciani & Almerinda Di Benedetto, 2024. "Hydrogen Safety Challenges: A Comprehensive Review on Production, Storage, Transport, Utilization, and CFD-Based Consequence and Risk Assessment," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(6), pages 1-26, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:6:p:1350-:d:1355324
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/6/1350/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/6/1350/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yue, Meiling & Lambert, Hugo & Pahon, Elodie & Roche, Robin & Jemei, Samir & Hissel, Daniel, 2021. "Hydrogen energy systems: A critical review of technologies, applications, trends and challenges," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Khorasani, Mahnaz & Sarker, Sudipa & Kabir, Golam & Ali, Syed Mithun, 2022. "Evaluating strategies to decarbonize oil and gas supply chain: Implications for energy policies in emerging economies," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    3. Jing, Rui & Hua, Weiqi & Lin, Jian & Lin, Jianyi & Zhao, Yingru & Zhou, Yue & Wu, Jianzhong, 2022. "Cost-efficient decarbonization of local energy systems by whole-system based design optimization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    4. Wenqi Ke & Hao Zeng & Zhuoyu Wang & Hong Yu & Yaxin Liu & Danzhu Zheng & Jianjun Zhu & Haiwen Zhu, 2023. "A Numerical Study on Labyrinth Screw Pump (LSP) Performance under Viscous Fluid Flow," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(16), pages 1-15, August.
    5. Shen, Yahao & Lv, Hong & Zheng, Tao & Liu, Yi & Zhou, Wei & Zhang, Cunman, 2023. "Temporal and spatial evolution of hydrogen leakage and diffusion from tube fittings on fuel cell vehicles under the effect of ambient wind," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Monasib Romel & Golam Kabir, 2025. "Prioritization of the Critical Factors of Hydrogen Transportation in Canada Using the Intuitionistic Fuzzy AHP Method," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(13), pages 1-27, June.
    2. Kathleen Araújo & Edward Potter & Anna Kouts & Oliver Newman & Max Milarvie & Fred Carcas & Cassie Koerner & Jacob Placido, 2025. "An International Review of Hydrogen Technology and Policy Developments, with a Focus on Wind- and Nuclear Power-Produced Hydrogen and Natural Hydrogen," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(17), pages 1-35, August.
    3. Delpisheh, Mostafa & Moradpoor, Iraj & Souhankar, AmirHossein & Koutsandreas, Diamantis & Shah, Nilay, 2026. "Advancing the hydrogen economy: Economic, technological, and policy perspectives for a sustainable energy transition," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 226(PB).
    4. Aghanouri, Amirhesam & Smirnov, Nikita & Olaverri-Monreal, Cristina, 2025. "Urban hydrogen adoption in Linz, Austria: Simulation and statistical detection of anomalies in sustainable mobility," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 401(PA).
    5. Pegah Mirzania & Da Huo & Nazmiye Balta-Ozkan & Niranjan Panigrahi & Jerry W. Knox, 2025. "Decarbonising Agriculture with Green Hydrogen: A Stakeholder-Guided Feasibility Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(20), pages 1-32, October.
    6. Kumar, Laveet & Sleiti, Ahmad K., 2025. "A comprehensive review of hydrogen safety through a metadata analysis framework," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    7. Andrzej Kuranc & Agnieszka Dudziak & Tomasz Słowik, 2025. "Low-Carbon Hydrogen Production and Use on Farms: European and Global Perspectives," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(19), pages 1-27, October.
    8. Grzegorz Mordarski & Konrad Skowron & Dorota Duraczyńska & Anna Drabczyk & Robert P. Socha, 2025. "Development of a Multi-Bed Catalytic Heat Generator Utilizing a Palladium-Based Hydrogen Combustion System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(6), pages 1-13, March.
    9. Eva Gregorovičová & Jiří Pospíšil, 2025. "Hydrogen Safety in Energy Infrastructure: A Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(20), pages 1-27, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mou, Xiaofeng & Zhou, Wei & Bao, Zewei & Huang, Weixing, 2024. "Effective thermal conductivity of LaNi5 powder beds for hydrogen storage: Measurement and theoretical analysis," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    2. Gai, Wei-Zhuo & Wang, Le-Yao & Lu, Meng-Yao & Deng, Zhen-Yan, 2023. "Effect of low concentration hydroxides on Al hydrolysis for hydrogen production," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    3. Yang, Wei-Wei & Tang, Xin-Yuan & Ma, Xu & Li, Jia-Chen & Xu, Chao & He, Ya-Ling, 2023. "Rapid prediction, optimization and design of solar membrane reactor by data-driven surrogate model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    4. Shi, Mengshu & Wang, Weiye & Han, Yaxuan & Huang, Yuansheng, 2022. "Research on comprehensive benefit of hydrogen storage in microgrid system," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 621-635.
    5. Long, Yaomei & Li, Songyuan & Liu, Guannan & Shen, Lin & Liao, Zhenyang & Lv, Yuan & Zhong, Yong & Li, Yun, 2025. "Effects of hydraulic oil viscosity on the operational performance of ultra-high-pressure hydrogen diaphragm compressors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 330(C).
    6. Pashchenko, Dmitry, 2023. "Hydrogen-rich gas as a fuel for the gas turbines: A pathway to lower CO2 emission," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    7. Lan, Penghang & Chen, She & Li, Qihang & Li, Kelin & Wang, Feng & Zhao, Yaoxun, 2024. "Intelligent hydrogen-ammonia combined energy storage system with deep reinforcement learning," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 237(PB).
    8. A.M. Shakorfow & A.H. Mohamed, 2024. "Cogeneration Via Solid Oxide Fuel Cells," Acta Chemica Malaysia (ACMY), Zibeline International Publishing, vol. 8(2), pages 97-106, August.
    9. Junior Diamant Ngando Ebba & Mamadou Baïlo Camara & Mamadou Lamine Doumbia & Brayima Dakyo & Joseph Song-Manguelle, 2023. "Large-Scale Hydrogen Production Systems Using Marine Renewable Energies: State-of-the-Art," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-23, December.
    10. Richard P. van Leeuwen & Annelies E. Boerman & Edmund W. Schaefer & Gerwin Hoogsteen & Yashar S. Hajimolana, 2022. "Model Supported Business Case Scenario Analysis for Decentral Hydrogen Conversion, Storage and Consumption within Energy Hubs," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-22, March.
    11. Zhang, Hong & Yuan, Tiejiang, 2022. "Optimization and economic evaluation of a PEM electrolysis system considering its degradation in variable-power operations," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 324(C).
    12. Kang, Kai & Cao, Chuansheng & Jiang, Chong & Li, Wei & Tang, Chang & Liu, Qian & Huang, Lei & Wen, Chang, 2025. "Capacity optimization for minimizing the cost on a hydrogen production system coupling the wind and solar power generation with PEM water electrolysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 335(C).
    13. Tom Terlouw & Christian Moretti & Carina Harpprecht & Romain Sacchi & Russell McKenna & Christian Bauer, 2025. "Global greenhouse gas emissions mitigation potential of existing and planned hydrogen projects," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 10(12), pages 1503-1515, December.
    14. Tan, Jiawei & Chen, Xingyu & Bu, Yang & Wang, Feng & Wang, Jialing & Huang, Xianan & Hu, Zhenda & Liu, Lin & Lin, Changzhui & Meng, Chao & Lin, Jian & Xie, Shan & Xu, Jinmei & Jing, Rui & Zhao, Yingru, 2024. "Incorporating FFTA based safety assessment of lithium-ion battery energy storage systems in multi-objective optimization for integrated energy systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 367(C).
    15. Lidia Gawlik & Eugeniusz Mokrzycki, 2021. "Analysis of the Polish Hydrogen Strategy in the Context of the EU’s Strategic Documents on Hydrogen," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-15, October.
    16. Banasiak, David & Kienberger, Thomas, 2024. "A comparative analysis of the economic feasibility of reversible hydrogen systems based on time-resolved operation optimisation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 371(C).
    17. Wang, Shilu & Bi, Yubo & Shi, Jihao & Wu, Qiulan & Zhang, Chuntao & Huang, Shenshi & Gao, Wei & Bi, Mingshu, 2025. "Real-time reconstruction of hydrogen leakage concentration field based on transient sparse monitoring data in hydrogen refueling stations," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    18. Meloni, Eugenio & Martino, Marco & Palma, Vincenzo, 2022. "Microwave assisted steam reforming in a high efficiency catalytic reactor," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 893-901.
    19. Ahmad Baroutaji & Arun Arjunan & John Robinson & Tabbi Wilberforce & Mohammad Ali Abdelkareem & Abdul Ghani Olabi, 2021. "PEMFC Poly-Generation Systems: Developments, Merits, and Challenges," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-31, October.
    20. Song, Hongqing & Lao, Junming & Zhang, Liyuan & Xie, Chiyu & Wang, Yuhe, 2023. "Underground hydrogen storage in reservoirs: pore-scale mechanisms and optimization of storage capacity and efficiency," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 337(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:6:p:1350-:d:1355324. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.