NGV Global

The NGV industry wasted no time at the beginning of this year, getting down to business in the first week in Zurich, Switzerland for a preliminary meeting on the establishment of ISO standards for natural gas fuelling stations for vehicles (including CNG and LNG). The meeting was the continuation of a process initiated by the IANGV, which submitted a New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) to ISO in 2008. After a successful ISO ballot of member nations last year, the ISO Technical Management Board (TMB) approved the Preliminary Meeting, a precursor to final approval of a full project, which is expected at the next TMB meeting this March. Hosted by the Swiss Gas and Water Industry Association, SVGW, the meeting was attended by representatives from as far afield as Argentina, Thailand and Australia.

Key objectives of the meeting included the formal acceptance of Martin Seifert of SVGW as Chair of the proposed standards technical committee and of NEN, the Nederlands Normalisatie-instituut as the Secretariat, with Shyreen Dahoe assuming the role of Secretary.

Also covered in the course of the meeting was clarification of the scope of the proposed standards and the recommendation of Project Leaders for two working groups to develop the standards:

WG 1  ‘CNG Stations for Fuelling Vehicles’
Convenor/Project leader: Mr. Diego Goldin (Argentina)
Co-convenor: Mr. Erik Büthker (Netherlands)
Experts:  to be nominated during the formal call for experts.

WG 2  ‘LNG Stations for Fuelling Vehicles’
Convenor/Project leader: Dr. Václav Chrz
Co-convenor: Philippe Fauvel
Experts: Mr. Harald Schmid, Mr. Flavio Mariani, Mr. Diego Goldin,  Mr. Erik Büthker and Mr.
Aik Lua; more experts will be nominated during the formal call for experts.

With an ISO representative present indicating the likely acceptance by the TMB of the recommendations of the Preliminary Meeting, work on producing draft standards has already commenced. An initial meeting of the Working Groups and Technical Committee has been scheduled for the Netherlands on 22nd and 23rd June of 2010.

Based on work done already in other arenas, the meeting was confident that the complete process can be completed well within the prescribed 3.5 year period required by ISO. IANGV members will be kept informed of the process via usual member communications, including access to minutes and draft standards via the IANGV member portal (soon to be launched). Those wishing to have input into the process as industry experts will be able to do so via their local national standards association. Formal calls for expert participation will be issued through the standards associations after the formal acceptance  of the recommendations by the TMB, expected this March.

IANGV thanks those delegates who attended the meeting and also SVGW and NEN for their considerable commitments as Chair and Secretariat respectively.

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