Regulations and Standards Revision under High Pressure Gas Safety Act for Hydrogen Refueling Stations

Abstract

High Pressure Safety Act is applied for hydrogen refueling station where FCVs are filled with high pressure hydrogen. Regulations and technical standards in the act have been revised many times due to changes of specification of FCV and hydrogen refueling station or requests from hydrogen refueling station operators. One of the biggest revision is the upgrade of maximum allowable working pressure to 82 MPa in 2012 along with the change of the nominal working pressure of FCV to 70 MPa from 35 MPa. In accordance to the change to 82 MPa, 8 m of safety distance between high pressure gas equipment and lot line and between dispenser and road is required. Metal materials which can be used for high pressure hydrogen equipment are limited. After that a lot of revisions have been done and adopted in hydrogen refueling stations. In 2020, a new regulation has been instituted to allow non-attended hydrogen refueling station that many hydrogen refueling station operators had demanded for a long time in order to improve availability of the station and reduce the operational cost.