CSA adding LNG standards

TORONTO, Ont. – The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) has been busy revising the rules and regulations that govern the use of natural gas in Canada.

“For CNG, most of you are probably familiar with CSA standards. We have well-established standards with regards to CNG,” said Pablo Fernadez Marchi, CSA project manager of energy and utilities.

“On the LNG side, we have only a few standards that address the topics in the industry.”

According to Marchi, who spoke at the Natural Gas Vehicles Canada conference in Toronto, one of the biggest changes comes with new rules governing the safety and operation of LNG refuelling stations.

“Ever since the transportation industry proposed to use LNG as a fuel for transportation, one of the initial needs was to have requirements for the LNG refuelling stations. After much discussion, with Canadian Natural Gas Vehicle Association (CNGVA), we finally decided to create a new annex in our Z276 standard to cover LNG fuelling stations. The annex was developed with help from the CNGVA, and some industry participants and published in February this year as Annex D Z276. The technical committee response for Z276 has been developing new requirements for mobile refuelling stations and those new requirements will be published in December or January. For the moment this will continue to be an annex, which is by definition an non-mandatory standard, however it was written in mandatory language to facilitate its adoption by regulators.”

Existing and proposed CSA natural gas standards
Existing and proposed CSA natural gas standards

In addition, the CSA is also working on revising other LNG regulations, including LNG 1 (which covers fuel connection devices) and LNG 2 (governing fuel containers).

“Most people know CSA B109 is the standard for CNG on-board systems. WE recently developed B109 part 2, for LNG systems. We had the existing document for CNG but not LNG. It has been in public review for the last 60 days and the public review closed on October 21.

“The remaining documents are all in our agenda for the future, however we only start working on development as we receive funding,” said Marchi.

CSA is even looking beyond commercial applications when it considers standards for natural gas.

“We are also getting close to publishing a new document, NGV5.1 for compressed natural gas residential fuelling appliances.”

Although CSA is a Canadian organization, Marchi said US influence is never far from consideration.

“One of the issues that keeps coming back to us from industry is why we didn’t mimic what the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) passed in the States with NFPA52, which essentially covers LNG making and stations in the US. For various reasons that have to do with the way we are structured at CSA and which committees were active at the moment we were requested to develop the LNG fuelling station standards, we took the executive decision to develop Annex D within the existing Z276 standard, even though we acknowledge these requirements could be better placed under B108 part 2. I believe we are going to do that in the future. Annex D will everntually taken out of Z276 and turned into a standard of its own, which could be B108 part 2 or its own standard.


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