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Design and Development Consultancy
News Release from: Pedcat
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 22 October 2003
PED guideline on heat exchangers
A new PED guideline attempts to bring structure to the issue of whether or not heat exchangers consisting of piping are to be categorised as vessels or piping.
Guidelines relating to the PED implementation are produced regularly, and while these guidelines do not have any legal status they represent the informed views of experts from the member nations Ignoring the specific guidelines is not recommended as all the third party certification bodies will use them as an informative document
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 21 Mar 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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The process of verifying proposed guidelines is in two stages: verification by the Working Party on Guidelines (WPG); followed by final verification by the EU Working Group on Pressure (WGP).
At the time of writing this article a reworked guideline (WPG 2/4) covering heat exchangers for refrigeration/air conditioning systems and heat pumps has been approved by the stage 1 committee, the Working Party on Guidelines.
Should it be successful at stage 2 the WGP then there will be an expectation that the industry will comply.
The guideline is complicated - some would say over complicated - in its attempt to bring structure to the issue of whether or not heat exchangers consisting of piping are to be categorised as vessels or piping.
The guideline is clear in that normally heat exchangers, even those consisting of piping, will be classified as vessels.
In general terms, when a specific device is categorised as a vessel rather than piping it often results in it falling into a higher PED category which may increase conformity assessment/certification costs.
The guideline describes preconditions and sets out rules that are to be applied to determine whether or not the specific heat exchangers can be categorised as piping by determination of piping/vessel predominance.
Once predominance has been determined additional rules specific to the actual process of categorisation are applied.
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