GC Hydrogen blast testing documentation?

[Arne]

Hello All,

Our H&S team is concerned about using hydrogen as a carrier gas in GCs. I have heard that instrument manufacturers have undertaken "blast tests" on their instruments to demonstrate the safety. I cannot find any documentation (video would be best) of these trials anywhere. Can somebody help?

I don't want to have to install calibrated hydrogen detectors in every GC!

I have read an account of detonating Hydrogen inside of GCs on Restek's site:

https://www.restek.com/row/technical-li ... rrier-gas/

Best and Thank You,

Arne

[Travisdog2]

Potentially of interest towards the end...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLjCcBMDktY

Kind Regards

TD2

[soccerdad007]

I recall being at Agilent GC seminars where one of their speakers, Darren Decker I think, showed video documenting attempts to blow up a GC using hydrogen. I recall it being difficult as H2 is so light and leaks out of confined spaces so rapidly making it difficult to build up the levels required for explosion

Kevin.

[James_Ball]

I can say that we have found broken columns before when using hydrogen, flowing up to 5ml/min and never had an explosion. Not saying it is impossible, but just have not had it as a result yet.

The Agilent systems after 5890s are really good at shutting down the flow if it can not maintain the head pressure needed for the column. It doesn't take much of a leak to not be able to maintain pressure, unless it is near the detector end of the column.

We have run hydrogen carrier for well over ten years with 8-10 instruments with dual columns without any problems.

When you think about it, look for a demonstration of igniting a balloon about the size of a GC oven, filled with pure pressurized hydrogen. It makes a loud bang, but doesn't really harm anything a few feet away. A GC oven would never have that much pressure (meaning not as much hydrogen total) and they are not perfectly sealed so the expanding gas has lots of places to escape before pressure from an ignition could build up high enough to blow the door open or crack the enclosure.

I would be more worried if there was methane in the oven than hydrogen. The only thing I can imagine that would result is a catastrophic explosion would be acetylene, that I would not want to be near.

[Arne]

Thank you all very much for the replies. I have not found the videos that Darren Decker showed but I will contact him for information.

[Jake]

Similar to James' experience, we've been running 5 GCs (7890s) with FIDs 24/7 for twelve years now without issue. We've had our share of broken columns, but again as James mentions, they're very quick to shutdown and go into an error state with any leak. Two of our 7890Bs came with hydrogen leak sensors, but we never set them up. All our hydrogen is supplied by hydrogen generators, which also shut down pretty quickly in the even of a leak anywhere. Our lab is huge, with three 8 foot hoods, and all our GCs go into gas saver mode 90 seconds after injection. So even at full split during injection, due to the highly diffusive nature of hydrogen, its concentration is always very low. I just don't consider this a safety concern greater than many others in a typical analytical lab.

I do recall long ago of reading an account of someone in the 70's or 80's getting an oven to explode. The conditions were so extreme (and no one was injured), I was laughing while reading it. I think we're all a little wiser at this point.

[dblux_]

...
When you think about it, look for a demonstration of igniting a balloon about the size of a GC oven, filled with pure pressurized hydrogen. It makes a loud bang, but doesn't really harm anything a few feet away. A GC oven would never have that much pressure (meaning not as much hydrogen total) and they are not perfectly sealed so the expanding gas has lots of places to escape before pressure from an ignition could build up high enough to blow the door open or crack the enclosure.
...

To be closer to real situation a baloon should have been filled with hydrogen/air mixture. Leaks in GC oven won't form mixtures with concentration exceeding upper explosive level.
Pure hydrogen is not explosive (it burns in the air). When mixed with air it makes explosive mixture which explodes after ignition (spark, flame).

[Consumer Products Guy]

I recall being at Agilent GC seminars where one of their speakers, Darren Decker I think, showed video documenting attempts to blow up a GC using hydrogen. I recall it being difficult as H2 is so light and leaks out of confined spaces so rapidly making it difficult to build up the levels required for explosion

Yes, I've also seen that video, at an Agilent seminar, and I do remember a Darren Decker too, maybe from a different seminar. Agilent TRIED to make a 5890 GC explode in several different ways by forcing hydrogen leaks, not successful, but finally was able to make it happen using a special ignitor and hydrogen flow, and the door remained sealed even with the explosion.

Of course, when we went to hydrogen carrier on one GC, my pointy haired boss was insistent on special venting, even though Agilent told us with the size of our room that hydrogen could never get anywhere close to the explosive limit. So pointy haired boss bought 20 foot lengths of stainless steel tubing (he didn't trust Swagelok connections for this, apparently even though Swagelok was used to make connections of higher-pressure hydrogen to all our GCs). Boss even bent that long tubing himself, and plumbed it to the exhaust hood. Reminded me of "Monk" on the TV show....sad....

[Arne]

It's Daron Decker I think not Darren. I tried to reach out to him but he may have left Agilent or retired. I would love to see the documentation on the efforts to get the 5890 to explode.

The 7890B Youtube video is a good start, though.

[TCCrab]

I would think getting a GC to explode because of a H2 leak would be near impossible.
But....getting a mass spec attached to the GC to detonate, not as hard as you would think.
Many, many, many moons ago (think late 1970's), while working in an unnamed Oil Company research lab in Richmond California, I was running routine petroleum distillate samples on a state of the art (then) Finnigan 4000 quadrupole mass spectrometer, and we used H2 as a carrier gas because it was piped directly from the refinery located adjacent to the research lab. One interesting feature of the Finnigan 4000 was a large thick glass viewport over the ion source region about 6 inches in diameter.
Late one afternoon I had removed the ion source for cleaning and didn't get finished by quitting time so I simply shut off the roughing pump and closed the mass spec up, leaving the ion source region at atmospheric pressure but sealed up.
When I arrived at the lab the following morning I discovered shards of glass all over the top of the instrument and a perfectly circular dent in the ceiling tile directly above the now shattered view port.
Obviously the GC kept putting H2 into the source region and when the concentration of H2 got high enough, the heated GC transferline ignited the mixture and sent the viewport over 6 feet into the air.
Needless to say, the safety people were quite concerned about H2 safety, and procedures were put into place to ensure it didn't happen again.

TC