Pressure Equipment in South Africa - SANS 347 Categories

Introduction of the Pressure Equipment Regulations and Conformity assessment in accordance with SANS 347:2010.

Under the Occupational Health and Safety act (Act 85 of 1993), the minister of Labour has introduced the Pressure Equipment Regulation (pdf) . This replaces the old Vessels Under Pressure Regulation.

The majority of the rules came into effect in April 2011.  There are a few key effects of the regulation.

Firstly, all vessels with a design pressure of over 50kPa are now covered by the act.  This often means that vessels previously excluded from the vessels under pressure regulations are now included.  For instance some atmospheric storage tanks are now included within the scope of these regulations.

Secondly the requirements for conformity assessment have been strengthened and more precisely defined.  These requirements are defined in SANS 347. 

The application of SANS 347 are based on Hazard categorisation.  This depends on the content of the vessel (Phase and level of hazard), the contained volume, and the design pressure.

Since adoption of these regulations, we have had many discussions with manufacturers and users where their understanding of these requirements is incomplete or based on the previous rules.  To help simplify this Bufo technology have launched a simple web tool.  You are welcome to use this tool to complete the classification and give you a summary of the requirements.

Remember that this tool can't replace somebody skilled in the use of the regulation.  It will however give you a quick confirmation of the main requirements that apply to your product.  Please feel free to comment on this as it is a work in progress and we will keep improving it based on your comments.

Link to the web tool.