The experience of Halikko Works with EN 13445:2002 “Unfired pressure vessels”

Executive summary This document describes the experience of a Finnish manufacturer of steel dished ends “Rautaruukki Halikko Works” with the Pressure equipment directive 97/23/EC (PED) and EN 13445:2002 “Unfired Pressure Vessels Standard”. EN 13445:2002 is extensively applied in their manufacturing process to comply with the PED. The success of the standard in this country is due to the high technical quality of the standard, the support of the national standardization body, the national authorities and important Finnish notified bodies. The activities of Rautaruukki Halikko Works Rautaruukki is an important European manufacturer of high quality steel products and produces total solutions for the construction, mechanical engineering and metal fabrication industries. The group has a wide selection of products and services for metal products and is supported by a worldwide network of sales offices. The group’s turnover in the January-September 2003 period was EUR 2,194 million and Operating profit was EUR 128 million

The Halikko Works is a profit center of the Finnish steel company Rautaruukki and is located at 120 km from and has been active since the 1950's. There are 106 Halikko employees, and their products are dished ends, cones, segmental plates, semispherical and spherical plates for pressure equipments. The small company is a subcontractor for pressure equipment manufacturers. Halikko Works has grown to be one of the largest manufacturers in Europe and its products are used in many industrial sectors (wood processing, petrochemical, ship building, food).

Typical dished end produced by Halikko Works.

The use of European standards at Halikko works: Halikko Works is a manufacturing factory. They work as subcontractor of pressure vessel manufacturers who apply fully EN 13445 for their vessels (including the design part) and require Halikko to use the parts appropriate for their manufacturing work, i.e.:

• EN 13445-2:2002 “Unfired pressure vessels - Part 2: Materials” • EN 13445-4:2002 “Unfired pressure vessels - Part 4: Fabrication” • EN 13445-5:2002 “Unfired pressure vessels - Part 5: Inspection and testing”

Halikko Works has even anticipated the final publication of the standard (May 2002) since it has already used EN 13445 parts 2, 4 and 5 from year 1999, in its draft versions.

Materials are normally complying with the EN 10028 series:

• EN 10028-2:1992 “Flat products made of steels for pressure purposes - Part 2: Non-alloy and alloy steels with specified elevated temperature properties” • EN 10028-3:1992 “Flat products made of steels for pressure purposes - Part 3: Weldable fine grain steels, normalized” • EN 10028-7:2000 “Flat products made of steels for pressure purposes - Part 7: Stainless steels”

Sometimes customers require also that the ends are manufactured according to EN 12953-4:2002 “Shell boilers - Part 4: Workmanship and construction of pressure parts of the boiler”.

The production at Halikko works Halikko Works is leader in , Norway and and its production is strongly liked with Pressure Equipment Directive (PED).

The number of customers ordering equipments complying with the PED has strongly increased since 2000. The biggest increase was however noticed between May 2002 and end 2002. In total, 5000 heads have been manufactured according to the PED (mainly according to EN 13445).

About 70 % of the production is to export. The customers are mainly from Finland and Sweden although other countries close to the and Countries from central Europe were also represented.

The company is well recognised as being competent for the manufacturing of dished ends, cones, shells, segment plates for pressure vessels and tanks is well established and supported by a series of certificates (ISO 9001:2000 + EN 729-2:1995; ISO 14001:1996, TÜV CERT, DNV certificates and others). Specification and approval of welding procedures follow EN 288-3 whereas qualification and certification of NDT personnel is in accordance with EN 473. About 15000 radiographs are made per year.

The Challenges Rautaruukki is faced with when using EN 13445 Harmonized standards give the basic level of what must be fulfilled to comply with the PED. The EN 13445 suffers in some cases from the competition with European/non European national codes which are less demanding and therefore more cost effective. For example some codes allow the use of materials without any particular material appraisal and without the need for specified impact properties. It is clear that the minimum requirements to fulfill PED should be the same whatever code is used and that this concept should be supported by all parties including the notified bodies. Codes obviously less demanding then EN 13445 should not be seen as fulfilling the PED in the same way.

Why is EN 13445 widely used in Finland? The success of EN 13445 in Finland is certainly related to a series of decisions and attitudes:

• A general attitude in Finland of following rules: The PED came into force in May 2002 and the directive gives a privilege to harmonized European standards. This has well been understood and is implemented in practice.

• A strong interest in following and applying innovative techniques.

• The Finnish standardization body SFS has stopped the development and maintenance of national standards for pressure equipment in the 1990’s and decided to concentrate on the development of European standards.

• The Finnish authority for pressure equipment “Tukes” recommends the use of harmonized European standards including EN 13445.

• Important Finnish notified bodies such as “Polartest” and “INSPECTA” actively support the use of harmonized European standards.

Quote from Rautaruukki Halikko Works quality manager “The use of harmonized EN-standards is a safe move to make the conformity assessment of the pressure equipment manufacturer. The end user of pressure equipment should always specify the use of harmonized standard in his first enquiry”

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Rautaruukki Halikko Works and in particular Mr Jorma Hietalahti “Quality Manager” for the hospitality, the valuable information provided and the open discussions on the challenges for the unfired pressure vessel standard EN 13445:2002.

Brussels, December 2003 Nouredine HAKIMI CEN Programme Manager

For more information go to Rautaruuki website: http://www.rautaruukki.com