EN 746-2 - Industrial Thermoprocessing Equipment

The standards of the UNI EN 746 series contain the requirements for the safe design and construction of industrial thermoprocessing equipment. The full list of these standards is given below:

Part 1: Common safety requirements for industrial thermoprocessing equipment;

Part 2: Safety requirements for combustion and fuel handling systems;

Part 3: Safety requirements for the generation and use of atmosphere gases;

Part 4: Particular safety requirements for hot dip galvanising thermoprocessing equipment;

Part 5: Particular safety requirements for salt bath thermoprocessing equipment;

Part 6: Particular safety requirements for material melting, re-melting and liquid phase maintenance thermoprocessing equipment;

Part 7: Particular safety requirements for vacuum thermoprocessing equipment;

Part 8: Particular safety requirements for quenching equipment.

In particular, the Standard EN 746-2, published in May 2011, by Technical Committee CEN / TC 186 replaces the previous version of 1997.
This is technical standard of type C. This part of EN 746 together EN 746-1 specifies safety requirements for single and multiple burners that are part of industrial Thermoprocessing Equipment (IThE).

It deals with significant hazards, hazardous situations and events relevant to combustion and fuel handling systems that are part of IThE, when used as intended and under the conditions foreseen by manufacturer.

The standard also gives the necessary requirements for the information for use. The standard applies to any oxidation with air or other gases containing free oxygen of gaseous, liquid and solid fuels or any combustion of them to release thermal energy.

EN 746-2: 2010 is the reference European Standard for the Safety of Industrial Furnaces. Applications are in the following fields:

• Metallurgical and metal-working industry
• Glass-making industry
• Ceramic-manufacturing
• Cement-, lime- and gypsum-manufacturing
• Chemical/petrochemical industry
• Waste incineration

At international level, since 2014, there are 2 reference standards: EN ISO 13577-2 and EN ISO 13577-4. These latter 2 standards are at the moment under revision: the -4 was published in 2022 and it deals with the safety control systems, while the -2 will be published in early 2024 and it deals with the “process safety”.

In the late years of 2010 there has been an effort to update EN 746-2 to include some of the prescription of EN ISO 13577-2 and a project started to define an EN 746-11. The latter standard never saw the light, despite it is possible to buy a prEN 746-11, as well as you may find a draft EN 746-2:2020 edition. We recommend you do not follow neither of the two documents, both projects were cancelled! The plan is now to replace EN 746-2 with the 2022 and 2024 edition of EN ISO 13577-4 and -2 respectively. EN ISO 13577-2 contains few changes compared with EN 746-2, like the definition and additional prescriptions for LINE BURNERS. EN ISO 13577-4 is instead quite different from the paragraph 5.7 of EN 746-2: we managed to merge the traditional approach to furnace safety with the techniques of Functional Safety in High and Low demand.

You find hereafter the roadmad of the Standards that deal with techniques how to design a safe Industrial Furnace. As you can see, EN 746-2 is planned to be replaced by the new edition of EN ISO 13577-2, foreseen in early 2024 and EN ISO 13577-4: 2022.