Publications

According to the European Environment Agency, transport accounts for around a third of the final energy consumption in the EEA member countries and for more than a fifth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Road transport represents 82% of transport energy use. Transport emissions are coming under increasing attention of policy makers in the EU. Emissions of air pollutants from transport have generally declined over the past two decades. However, around 90% of city dwellers in the EU are still exposed to air pollutants at levels deemed harmful to health by the World Health Organization (WHO), and transport is a large contributor to this. Transport also causes noise impacts. Road traffic exposes more people to harmful levels of noise than any other source. This Environmental Newsletter is intended to help assist people how they can improve the environmental impact related to transport operations.

Human factors play a significant role in environmental incidents and in maintaining legal compliance. As with safety incidents, eliminating or minimising human factor causes can be achieved by design and by using behavioural techniques. This newsletter provides examples and guidance for the gas industry on the use of human factors tools and their application to environmental issues. It provides some examples of where these tools can be applied in addressing conditions with human factors causes, for example during deliveries of materials, loading unloading, filling.

The EIGA Environmental Award recognizes EIGA Members for environmental excellence and nominations can be received for sites, teams, or individuals. The Environmental Award aims to promote best environmental practices and recognise employees in the Industrial and Medical Gas industry who have been involved in these. It also enables EIGA to share these best practices and to promote environmental awareness and improvements within companies and across the industry. For the 2015 Awards, presented at our 2016 Annual General Meeting, EIGA received applications from a range of projects that merited recognition for improving the environment. In this Newsletter is a selection of the projects that were judged to have met the criteria and should be seen as best practice in the Industrial and Medical Gas industry.

Water Footprints and Water Footprinting methodologies are an emerging topic for regulators and non-government organisations. EIGA has produced this newsletter to provide information to EIGA members on what is meant by Water Footprint, what it means to the industrial and medical gas industry, and what actions should be taken. Additional sources of information are also provided.

Installation and removal of equipment on or from a customer’s site as part of engineering industrial and medical gas installations is a frequent activity for EIGA members. This newsletter highlights a number of key environmental hazards and some methods of control that are relevant to commissioning and decommissioning of small installations on customer sites such as tanks, pipework, vessels , compressors, pumps, filling stations, PSAs rather than larger on site gas plants. These equipment installations are generally small scale activities and the hazards can be overlooked and not identified and controlled.

This publication provides guidelines to ensure that hazards inherent of pressure tests are mitigated, risks are managed and exposure to personnel and public is limited. It provides guidelines for managing and planning pressure tests (leak tests and proof tests) of field-installed process piping. This includes all operations necessary for planning, preparation, pressure test of the piping, depressurisation, and restoring the system back to service.

Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 on materials and articles intended to come into contact with food has provided to the EU Member States a common regulation on the safety characteristics that materials and objects intended to come into contact directly or indirectly with foodstuffs. According to the Regulation 1935/2004 the Food Contact Materials (FCMs) shall be manufactured in compliance with Reg (EC) No 2023/2006, on good manufacturing practice for materials and articles intended to come into contact with food so that, under normal or foreseeable conditions of use, they do not transfer their constituents to food in quantities which could: • endanger human health; • bring about an unacceptable change in the composition of the food; or • bring about a deterioration in the organoleptic characteristics thereof. Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 laying down the general principles and requirements of food law, establishing the European Food Safety Authority and laying down procedures in matters of food safety defined food additives (and ingredient) as foodstuff and in this approach, gases used as food additives shall be in compliance with the same regulation and legislation applicable to foodstuff and, consequently also to the Regulation 1935/2004. In consequence, gas companies shall focus on the conformity of the material in contact with the food additive gases during their production, storage but also in all the supply chain till the point of use.

The concept of safety critical elements was introduced in the UK oil and gas sector by the legislation enacted following the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988. After this, the concept has been extended to the rest of process industries, including industrial gases. A common practice to all process industries is that they manage the safety of their operations using Risk Based Process Safety Management Systems. The main objective of Risk Based Process Safety Management Systems is preventing the occurrence of Process Safety Incidents (PSI). Safety critical devices (SCD) are defined specifically as instruments and equipment which mitigate against a safety risk, i.e. not a business or environmental risk. The safety risk should be credible in terms of probable likelihood and potential consequence. The purpose of this publication is to provide industry guidance for the identification and management of SCD within the industrial and medical gases industry.

This publication provides an accessible overview of current commercially available industrial hydrogen production methods

This publication provides recommended best practices and standardised procedures for personnel using hydrogen supply systems. The practices and procedures are limited to bulk gaseous and cryogenic liquid hydrogen and do not address non-bulk (cylinders) supply systems. This publication addresses processes for commissioning, filling, decommissioning, maintaining, and operating hydrogen supply systems.