Reliability and Safety in Technology Development: H2 Mobility Applications

Developing technology that is safe and reliable is paramount for any successful commercial application. With this end in mind Shell Hydrogen has developed a comprehensive approach to design, build, and operate Hydrogen mobility assets in such a way that safety and reliability are at the core of the concurrent engineering processes that govern the stages of their lifecycle. This has been achieved in practice by leveraging systems engineering, reliability methods, and safety practices along with the experience and expertise of Shell Hydrogen, original equipment manufacturers, and system integrators.

Safety and reliability are important performance attributes of any engineered system where human-machine interactions are present. However, they are usually approached as afterthoughts or, in some cases, unintended consequences of the system design and development process that must be addressed and verified in subsequent design stages. In plain words, safety and reliability are often seen as constraints that add layers of complexity and extra costs to the minimum functional system of interest.

The challenges in implementing this approach are many, ranging from access to historical data on equipment and component safety and reliability performance, to lack of standardization in the industry when dealing with hydrogen related hazards. This presentation is aimed at describing the approach in more detail, some of the early successes and failures during deployment, and the continual improvement journey that lies ahead.