As with other alternative-fueled vehicles, all commercial vehicles that store hydrogen fuel onboard should carry a label that identifies the type of fuel used in order to alert emergency response personnel to the types of hazards they might face if the vehicle is involved in an accident. These labels should conform with SAE J2578, a fuel cell safety recommended practice developed by the Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE, 2002).
This practice recommends a diamond-shaped label with a blue background and white lettering (see Figure 16). It also specifically recommends that the words “Compressed Hydrogen” or “Liquid Hydrogen” be contained in the blue diamond, depending on the form in which the hydrogen is stored on the vehicle.
SAE J2578 does not specify the location of the hydrogen label on the vehicle. For hydrogen-fueled cars, the manufacturer usually affixes the label to the rear of the vehicle, as shown in Figure 16. For commercial tractor-trailer units, a label on the rear of the power unit would likely be obscured by the trailer. For that reason, all commercial vehicles should include the hydrogen label on the rear of the vehicle and on each side of the power unit cab, below the DOT numbers mandated by 49 CFR 390.21. As with these DOT numbers, the hydrogen labels should be legible from fifty feet in daylight.
Any commercial trailer unit that will store hydrogen (for example, to fuel a transportation refrigeration unit) should also have SAE J2578-compliant hydrogen labels affixed. These labels should be located on the rear of the trailer and on each side of the trailer, in the vicinity of where the hydrogen fuel tank is located.
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