International Valve Standards – Setting Priorities

By Martin Greenhalgh, CEng FIMechE, BVAA’s Technical Consultant

Published: 17th November 2016 | Issue 39 Share article:

From 11th to 14th October 2016, ISO/TC153 ‘Valves’ held a series of meetings in Tokyo to continue its work on international standards for valves and actuators. Thirty-five delegates from 10 countries attended.

That’s a great deal of time, effort and cost!



Although tremendous progress has been made over many decades with valve standards, taken in isolation and with only small incremental advances, it is sometimes difficult to determine who gets value from all that effort. It is therefore important that BVAA establish what the wider valve community thinks about international standards for valves and actuators?

ISO/TC153 has responsibility for 23 standards. These fall into four categories: ‘basic,’ ‘product,’ ‘application’ and ‘performance.’ Within the UK and Europe the ‘basic’ standards for mounting valve actuators ISO 5210 and 5211 are widely used. As are the ‘performance’ standards for Fire Testing, ISO 10497, and Fugitive Emissions Testing, ISO 15848, which have international recognition.

Not all the valve work is done by ISO/TC153. Other active ISO committees contributing to valve standards include ISO/TC185 ‘Safety Devices’ and ISO/TC138 ‘Plastic Valves.’

In the last two years TC153 has focussed on developing ‘application’ standards, for example ISO 28921 ‘Isolating Valves for Low Temperature Applications’ and ISO 19240 ‘Lined Valves for the Chemical Industry.’ At the same time some of the original product standards developed in the late 1980’s and 90’s have been withdrawn, for example ISO 5996 ‘Cast Iron Gate Valves’ and ISO 12149 ‘Steel Globe Valves.’

The Valve Actuator working group of TC153, WG1, is very active and has just finished a major revision of ISO 5210 and 5211. They are about to start the development of an ISO standard for Electric Actuators and are considering whether an ISO for gear boxes, both manual and with actuator, is required.

At the meeting in Tokyo, TC153 elected a new chairman Jacques Peterschmitt from KSB in France to serve from 1st January 2017 for 5 years. Mr Peterschmitt has instigated a review of the future work programme of ISO/TC153. I think we all agree that all those hours of effort need to be generating standards that have real value.

The standards world is competitive. The idyllic thought that existed in the 1970’s that sometime in the future we could have one standard has clearly been shown to be an unrealisable dream. EN, ASME, ISO, API etc., are all trying to exert their influence over the industrial valve market. User standards also proliferate and today there seems to be even less interest from the users in any form of standards activity, except perhaps API. The user seems much more focussed on enhancing his own special requirements even though we are told that reducing cost is also his fundamental priority.

One thing is certain. Time is an increasingly scarce commodity, so nobody wants to be wasting theirs.

BVAA welcomes views on international standards making, contact rob@bvaa.org.uk

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