UPDATE – Federal: B620 Committee agrees to CPA proposed changes to highway tank inspection sizes

The CPA’s requested revision to the B620 code regarding language pertaining to the CPA’s former equivalency certificate for the allowance of TC 331 or MC 331 highway tanks to maintain a 10-year B620 inspection interval, has been submitted, accepted and will be included in the next version of the code.

As reported in the March 8 RA newsletter, when the previous version of the code was being revised to include the CPA’s former equivalency, three important words were omitted that provide tank size coverage of these 10-year inspection requirements.  The equivalency had indicated that “TC 331 tanks shall be used in dedicated propane service; be less than or equal to 13 250 L (3500 US gallons) water capacity”, however, the new language omitted the “or equal to” which could effectively exclude some tanks from this allowance.

TC had indicated this omission would not be a concern in the field as they felt the current metric quantity covered the industry and would not pose an enforcement concern between now and the next revision.

TC is studying the effects these new changes are having on the maintenance of these tanks. The CPA indicated that the current study TC conducted was  “unscientific” and TC responded by saying they will continue to monitor the effect on the tanks implicated in these changes to the code.

For any questions regarding this issue, contact Robert Loenhart, Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs and Safety at robertloenhart@propane.ca.