How Can You Better Understand Hydrogen and CNG Certifications?
Global investment into Hydrogen and Compressed Natural Gas powered vehicles and their supporting infrastructure continues. That means selecting and specifying high-performance components is essential. But where to start? On-vehicle systems require dozens of components to operate reliably. Each of these components should be tested and proven to deliver reliable performance. In a new four-part Ask Swagelok video series, we look to make sense of the current landscape.
In our first installment, Chuck Hayes, Swagelok’s global technical lead for hydrogen, explains how you can better understand hydrogen and CNG certifications.
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CRAIG GIFFORD:
Welcome to Ask Swagelok. I'm Craig Gifford here with Chuck Hayes, who is Swagelok’s global hydrogen expert. And today, Chuck, we're going to talk about certifications in the clean energy space, from hydrogen to compressed natural gas.
So, Chuck, there's a lot of confusion about certifications for both hydrogen and compressed natural gas. Can you help us explain that a little bit?
CHUCK HAYES:
Well, great question. One of the biggest reasons there's confusion is that there are different standards in different parts of the world. In Europe, they have EN standards. There are global standards done by ISO as a standards organization. In North America, we have CSA, which is the Canadian Standards Association that does all gaseous fuels here. They're all slightly different and have slightly different requirements, and then they break down from there.
So, if you talk about CNG—which came first earlier in the progression of building these standards—they're all NGV standards. On-vehicles start with a three, so 3.1 is a whole vehicle. Then there's other standards below: 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 for different components and major systems within it. For HGV, it's the same thing: HGV 3.1. For infrastructure, it starts with a four. So, for a full dispensing system, it's 4.1 and the valves on that would be 4.4. And those break out too. There's about ten of those for hydrogen and CNG.
ISO’s similar. They break it out different ways. They have a couple of different standards for on-vehicle, one which is 12619, which breaks out each individual component. There's about 22 different standards there. That's being combined right now and will become just a natural gas blend, hydrogen later. A new standard is coming out soon which is 19887, for the individual components. The good news is that this should reduce some of the confusion in Europe. Previously, EN EC79 was the on-vehicle individual components standard, which has been retired and left a void. 19887 will probably fill that void pretty soon, and that's great.
The other thing is that sometimes certain countries will take a standard or write their own standards—like India. 12619 for hydrogen has become their national standard, with different letters at the beginning. Sometimes they add what are called regional deviations, so there might be differences. Korea did that, taking some of the ISO standards and putting special requirements on them, which makes it confusing depending on where you're at. It makes it difficult as a manufacturer to make sure you can supply to all these different regions. We've gone ahead and tested to all the major standards to help people out.
CRAIG GIFFORD:
Great. Well, thanks, Chuck. We really appreciate it. And thank you for joining us at Ask Swagelok.