Preparing any hazardous facility for transition from project to operations requires a rigorous management process. In the area of Hydrogen Operations those hazards are heightened and there are limited examples of transitioning a Hydrogen facility from project to operations outside of large-scale oil refineries.
This paper aims to highlight the unique challenges of managing hydrogen process safety through the project to operate phase while maintaining safety standards that meet or exceed the expectations of the owner, regulator, and the community in which we operate.
Our experience transitioning hydrogen operations started in Queensland which has arguably the toughest engineering and safety standards in Australia. This experience has informed our methodologies and the important points of this paper for both Owner and Regulator detail what to expect from the Operator and what the Operator will need to be able to demonstrate compliance.
Hydrogen operations traditionally were on oil refineries which may have been in local communities, unlike remote upstream gas and oil projects far from the major populations’ refineries are close to transportation hubs and the end users. Our experience is that Hydrogen or Hydrogen transport fluids such as ammonia, MCH and others are more likely to reside near major international ports with close access to both clean energy and available workforce which heightens the ESG and community risk management requirements.
This paper intends to inform Regulators, Owners and Operators of the unique challenges and aspects of getting the local Hydrogen plant up and running in a safe and community sensitive way.

The Energy Transition is gathering pace and already it’s apparent there is not one solution to replace our traditional means of sourcing energy from fossil fuels energy.
The Energy Transition embraces renewables, whether in the form of solar, wind, or using recycled materials and plant feedstocks such as vegetable oils refined to produce fuel. You may be looking to decarbonize, electrify or simply reduce consumption. There is a colourful range of Hydrogen solutions in either Grey, Blue or Green available, or even considering a carbon capture storage solution. The circular economy is emerging with waste to energy ideas being considered on a scale not seen before. The rush to market to be the first sees the configuration of solutions changing rapidly as ideas and technology improve.
Technologies involved in the Energy Transition use hazardous materials which on their own are not new, but the size and scale are starting to test technological boundaries, as well as exposing a new breed of energy entrepreneurs to these hazards with no real memory of process safety incidents that have shaped behaviours in traditional industries. Many of the new solution providers don’t have exposure to traditional Safety Management System processes and structures that traditional industry operates within.
This session shares the early experiences in the Energy Transition of new developments from a Process Safety perspective and how embracing the problem with a Process Safety mindset will underpin the foundations of how we safely consume reliable energy in the future.

With an increase in the production and storage of Hydrogen, it is likely that an increased number of explosions in which hydrogen plays a central role will be seen. Modelling releases of hydrogen and explosions arising from the delayed ignition of premixed gas clouds of hydrogen is carried out today using analytical and numerical approaches and most recently, using hybrid methodology used in the commercially available software exploCFD. Hybrid simulation methodology relies on the calculation of an analytically derived source term which is then used as an input for a 2D numerical simulation. Here we test the ability of the hybrid methodology to predict flammable gas dispersion and subsequent explosions arising from hydrogen releases. Hydrogen has some particularly unique properties. It is the lightest of fuels, meaning masses involved are very small, and has the highest laminar burning velocity: an order of magnitude greater than most hydrocarbons. The methodology is compared against large scale explosion tests carried out by Tanaka et al 2007 and against dispersion tests carried out by Middha et al 2010. Excellent agreement between overpressure prediction and the experimental data of Tanaka et al 2007 for explosion against distance is observed. The data from the hydrogen jet release simulations also compare extremely well to the experimental data of Middha et al 2010. The results show that it is difficult to justify the use of far more laborious, time and cost intensive purely numerical methods and the use of largely uncertain more crude methods still widely used today.

Leadership, learning and hazard management in Process Safety are tightly connected when it comes to assuring the integrity of our Assets. Origin Energy has implemented a number of Process Safety initiatives over the last 4 years to empower its people during periods of uncertainty faced during the pandemic and fast evolving industrial landscape. The aim was to create an open technical learning and Process Safety Hazard awareness culture. Amongst these initiatives are the following key ones:
- Process Safety Culture: deliver on process safety awareness building initiatives to empower senior leaders and frontline workforce, with the use of innovative tools such as Process Safety animations and mobile Major Accident Event awareness training, developed by Safer Together, a non-for profit organisation whose purpose is to make the Coal Seam Gas Industry Safer in Australia, and is comprised of Operating and Contractor member companies
- Process Hazard Awareness: Develop strong Process Safety foundations and competences; and revalidate Major Accident Events and critical controls to ensure best practice for Process Hazard Management in a virtual world.
- Learning culture: develop and nurture an open learning culture with the creation of a unique Engineering & Technical Community of Practice to foster proactive sharing of technical learnings and collaboration across boundaries, which won the Origin Energy HSE Award in 2021 for the Best Initiative in the Learning Category.
This paper and presentation will cover these strategic initiatives and share implementation learnings.