ISO Published Standards for CNG and LNG Fuelling Stations
In December 2016, ISO has published two international standards that will play an important role in the deployment of the alternative fuels infrastructure. The publication of ISO 16923 and ISO 16924 enables parties to apply broadly supported requirements for the design, construction, operation, maintenance and inspection of CNG and LNG fuelling stations, respectively.
A large group of experts from various countries across the world has worked on these ISO standards during the past years. The experts have shared their knowledge and experiences to establish the state-of-the-art. All interested parties had the opportunity to provide comments during two public enquiries. ISO 16923 and ISO 16924 provide practical tools for industry and authorities to further develop the infrastructure for natural gas as automotive fuel.
The European Commission published the Directive on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure (2014/94/EU) in 2014. This Directive refers to technical specifications for this infrastructure that should be established in European standards with respect to interoperability aspects. For this reason, the European Commission has requested the European organisations for standardization – CEN and CENELEC – to develop these standards including CNG and LNG fuelling stations. European stakeholders have indicated that ISO 16923 and ISO 16924 will be adequate to be adopted as European standard, and with that as national standard in the 34 countries that are member of CEN. This adoption process will be initiated in 2017.
ISO 16923:2016
ISO 16923:2016 covers the design, construction, operation, inspection and maintenance of stations for fuelling compressed natural gas (CNG) to vehicles, including equipment, safety and control devices. It also applies to portions of a fuelling station where natural gas is in a gaseous state and dispensing CNG derived from liquefied natural gas (LCNG) according to ISO 16924. The standard is inclusive of biomethane, upgraded coal-bed methane (CBM) and gas supplies coming from LNG vaporization (on-site or off-site). 16923:2016 is based on the condition that the gas entering the fuelling station is odorized.
ISO 16924:2016
ISO 16924:2016 specifies the design, construction, operation, maintenance and inspection of stations for fuelling liquefied natural gas (LNG) to vehicles, including equipment, safety and control devices. It also specifies the design, construction, operation, maintenance and inspection of fuelling stations for using LNG as an onsite source for fuelling CNG to vehicles (LCNG fuelling stations), including safety and control devices of the station and specific LCNG fuelling station equipment. The standard is inclusive of all equipment from the LNG storage tank filling connection up to the fuelling nozzle on the vehicle. The LNG storage tank filling connection itself and the vehicle fuelling nozzle are not covered in this document.
NEN holds the secretariat of the ISO technical committee that is responsible for ISO 16923 and ISO 16924. Information about these standards or the standardization process can be obtained from Jarno Dakhorst consultant Energy by phone +31 15 2 690 245 or e-mail [email protected].
NEN has also managed the Dutch LNG Safety Program. The results of this program are available at www.safelng.nl.
Source and more information: NEN
