Fire tests carried out in FCH JU Firecomp project, recommendations and application to safety of gas storage systems
Résumé
In the event of a fire, composite pressure vessels behave very differently from metallic ones: the material is degraded, potentially leading to a burst without significant pressure increase. Hence, such objects are, when necessary, protected from fire by using thermally-activated devices (TPRD), and standards require testing cylinder and TPRD together. The pre-normative research project FireComp aimed at understanding better the conditions which may lead to burst, through testing and simulation, and proposed an alternative way of assessing the fire performanceof composite cylinders. This approach is currently used by Air Liquide for the safety of composite bundlescarrying large amounts of hydrogen gas.