ASME VIII B&PV 1

[ASMEguru]

My company is involved in a chemical sourcing project in China. Our client has called for ASME 8 (or equivalent) iso tanks to be used for transport.

In checking with the Chinese Certification Society (which is a member with IACS)I was unable to find any relevant equivalencies from CCS --> ASME 8 in terms of material.

Our concern is that the Chinese material will not be up to snuff in terms of ASME 8 standard.

If anyone has any information that they could share, I would appreciate it. The material in question is GB713 (Steel plates for B&PV) which we believe is carbon steel but that is not confirmed at this time.

Any ideas folks? Thanks in advance!

 

[trottiey]

You can get ASME certified materials in China. Much of the material we use comes from there. If in doubt, use UG-10 to recertify it yourself.

I found this link when I googled GB713:

http://www.codeofchina.com/gb/metallurgical/200907/16-502.html

 

[ASMEguru]

Thanks Trottiey for the response.

One of the other forum posts on here said that you could re-certify foreign materials, however, that seems like it would be a costly endeavor. Any idea on the equivalency of ASME 8 to CCS?

 

[trottiey]

We do it all the time, and it costs us maybe $500 per heat. But you've got to know what you're doing, and maybe the learning curve can get expensive? At least read UG-10 before getting scared off by the costs.

Finding the nearest equivalency will only give you the starting point for re-certification. ASME Section VIII requires all materials to conform to one of the specifications in Section II. I don't think you'll find GB713 there.

 

[trottiey]

Wait a second, I just realized you said this was for transport. I think you might want to recommend Section XII to your customer?

 

[ASMEguru]

You are correct and I've been doing quite a bit of research and talking with quite a few technical folks about this issue.

Considering the lack of available carbon steel gas tanks available for lease, we had to commission one of them to get built. Ideally, ASME carries quite a bit of weight behind it as it is internationally accepted (from my personal experience anyway). We are trying to pair these two tanks as both ASME 8 instead of one ASME 8 + one CCS just to make the project uniform and also to avoid any last minute hitches.

I know the Chinese have recently renamed their standards (in 2007 I believe) so GB713 is now something like Q245R where the Q and the R stand for something. As you can tell, material isn't my strong suit so please bear with me.

I'm wondering if there is a conversion calculator/chart out there somewhere. Any ideas?

 

[trottiey]

GB713, like most material standards, covers many different alloys, including Q245R. It looks like GB713 Q245R is a manganese-silicon steel that bears some resemblance to ASME SA-516 Grade 60. But they're not the same thing. Equivalence between different material standards systems is never a one-to-one thing; it would be more accurate to say that there is overlap between the two. Any given batch of material might be dual-certifiable to both standards, or it might meet either standard but not the other. So you should select a batch that looks close, and do the testing to try to recertify it to ASME. (And then if it fails, you get your metallurgist to look for some other ASME standard that might be a better match to this particular heat.)

As to the choice of ASME VIII or ASME XII, that's entirely between you, your regulator, your victims, and their lawyers. But I will say that the ASME XII rules considered some accident scenarios that ASME VIII did not, and your design should account for those possibilities regardless of which code you use.

 

[ASMEguru]

Brother, I can't tell you how much I appreciate everything. The ASME codes are somewhat new to me so now I believe I'm armed with the right questions to ask to come into compliance.

Obviously the professionals, who have the knowledge of these codes will be looking at this project with a fine toothed comb, but I'm glad I have a semi grasp on the concepts anyway.

Thanks again!!!