The new Section XIII is titled “Rules for Overpressure protection”. For the first time, it provides manufacturers and users with all requirements for safety valves and their design, testing, materials and approvals in a single document. This means that having to search multiple sections for relevant information is a matter of the past. As far as technical changes are concerned, the new BPCV Sec XIII is actually quite conservative. This means that LESER safety valves continue to meet all requirements, and all previous approvals remain in effect without limitation. The UV symbol will remain on the nameplate. LESER employees are active on all relevant ASME Code committees and will be glad to advise our customers.

Up until 2020, the Code consisted of 12 sections providing requirements for pressure vessels as well as safety valves. For all users of the ASME Code, this meant that they had to search hundreds of pages to look for a relevant requirement. The background for this is that the ASME BPVC was first issued in 1914 and updated annually in many expert sessions. Today it is applied in more than 100 countries around the globe. 

LESER safety valves meet all requirements. To make sure this continues to be the case in the future, LESER experts follow a structured, processdriven procedure to identify all standard updates. These updates are then evaluated by the relevant departments, and rapidly applied to our products. ASME requires all changes to the code to be implemented no later than six months after publication. The recent shift of the safety valve requirements from Section VIII (Unfired Vessel) to Section XIII means that LESER has to update roughly 350 documents to correct references to standards, such as those to Subsections UG 125 through 141. Now the documents have to refer to the corresponding subsections of Section XIII. LESER will update its catalogs, testing procedures, test certificates and other documents accordingly in the near future. 

In annual sessions, experts assigned to three subgroups called “Design Material”, “General Requirements” and “Testing”, respectively work on the further development of ASME BPVC Sec XIII. The superordinate “BPVC Sec XIII Standards Committee” aggregates and coordinates these activities. One LESER expert actively contributes to the Design Material subgroup and participates as a guest in sessions of the BPVC Sec XIII Standards Committee. Meetings typically take place in USA, however in times of COVID-19 they are held virtually via Zoom. The next edition of ASME BPVC Sec. XIII will be published in summer 2023. 

Our Engineering Order Management department and its leader, Bernd Jörgensen, can reassure you that everything conforms to the rules. Since the new Sec XIII contains few actual technical changes, all existing approvals remain in force without exception.