CoGDEM Comment - Gas Cylinders for Calibration and Testing of Gas Detection Instruments and Systems

CoGDEM is the Council of Gas Detection and Environmental Monitoring, a trade association with a membership of around sixty companies involved in the gas detection industry. We are pleased to have ILM/ETP (the publishers of this IET magazine) as an Associate Member, so we now place a regular column of news from the gas detection industry in IET magazine.

Several of CoGDEM’s member companies are manufacturers and suppliers of gas cylinders containing calibration gases, and many of our instrument and sensor manufacturers are users and resellers of large numbers of gas cylinders for the regular calibration and bump-testing of their instruments.  Other CoGDEM members are test laboratories, so they are also users of toxic and flammable gases when they test the safety of gas detecting instruments.  Consequently our entire industry is heavily dependent on the usage of stored gases, so we decided to address this subject during the Feb 2015 CoGDEM meeting at our Hitchin HQ. The UK trade body for gas cylinder manufacturers and fillers is the British Compressed Gases Association (BCGA), and their Technical Manager Jake Lake gave a useful presentation on the work of the organisation and some current issues.

As well as encouraging its members to be involved with the preparation and maintenance of standards in the UK, Europe and globally, the BCGA creates and updates industry guidance on items such as dealing with cylinders which are involved in fires, metal theft (heavy gas cylinders have been targeted), the misuse of gases and gas cylinders and rogue traders (particularly with beverage gases).  A range of documents are available, many of which are free to download from the BCGA website - www.bcga.co.uk .

Jake pointed out that within the gas detection industry, users of gas cylinders (often non-refillable, disposable cylinders) should be encouraged to check that they are from a reputable supplier, that the gases are of a suitable quality, they are only used before their expiry date, and the cylinder is manufactured to be compliant with relevant standards.  As an example, he mentioned that some US cylinders do not necessarily comply with UK regulations.  Care should be taken on the disposal of used cylinders; suppliers and the BCGA can give details of how to deal with disposal issues, as it needs to be ensured that all the contents have been safely exhausted and the internal pressure dissipated.

Some CoGDEM members attend the regular BCGA meetings, and the report of current projects included a new end-user document which is being prepared to offer guidance on the disposal of empty non-refillable cylinders. We were also told that Guidance Note 2 on the storage and safety of large gas cylinders will be replaced by a new Code of Practice CP44. 

Finally, there is a proposed extension to the periodic inspection and re-test requirement for certain types of refillable cylinders to 15 years. This is tied in with the ADR regulations (International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road).  ADR 2015 can be used from 1^st January 2015 and is mandatory from 1st July 2015.  The Department for Transport is producing supplementary guidance to advise how they, the UK National Competent Authority, will authorise this extension.

Jake’s presentation was well-received and informative; he has subsequently invited CoGDEM to ‘return the compliment’ by presenting its own work to the 2016 BCGA conference in Leeds.