BOC Gases wins NIST, NPL contracts

Murray Hill, NJ — BOC Gases (Murray Hill, NJ) has won contracts totaling approximately $500,000 to supply gaseous primary reference materials to the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST; Gaithersburg, MD) and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL; Teddington, U.K.). The five- and three-year contracts, respectively, make BOC the supplier of two-thirds of the world`s gaseous primary reference materials.

BOC will supply standard reference material (SRM) precursors to NIST, which will analyze and name the gaseous mixtures, then sell them through its Office of Standard Reference Materials (OSRM) division.

SRMs are the gold standard in the gases industry, says John Lewis, BOC`s marketing manager for specialty products. Industry and government agencies use SRMs for calibrations of instrumentation and critical measurements on products and emissions, often as required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Under the recent award, BOC will supply 85 percent of NIST`s gaseous SRMs. The shipments will be made in lots typically containing 52 cylinders each with a specific gas mixture composition.

NPL will use BOC-provided calibration gases in a national network of more than 100 air quality monitoring stations funded by the Department of the Environment, Transport and Regions. The network supplies air quality information for government environmental planning.

BOC manufactures gases and equipment, including on-site generators, cryogenic liquids and cylinder gases. “We now supply two of the three globally recognized standards manufacturers,” Lewis says. The third manufacturer is the Netherlands Measurement Institute (NMI) in Holland.

The contracts were awarded in part because of a BOC proprietary technology that enables the company to guarantee the stability of its reactive gaseous mixtures, Lewis says. The aluminum packaging technology provides long-term stability for low-level concentration reactive gas and guarantees stability below parts-per-billion concentration levels.