United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) statistics indicate accident rates among acetylene gas suppliers that have compliance certification are 63% lower than non-compliant firms, with American Compressed Gas Association (CGA) certified suppliers in 2023 controlling 79% of market share. Based on China’s Ministry of Emergency Management statistics, more than 12,000 acetylene charging stations holding hazardous chemical business licenses have been in operation nationwide, but almost 34% of them have not passed the special inspection in 2022 because they used out-of-date equipment.
Industry association recommendation platform can reduce screening cost, China Industrial Gas Association published annually “trusted supplier White Paper”, involved 200 member units acetylene purity of more than 99.5%, among which the implementation of ISO 9001 quality management system of enterprise customers re-purchase ratio of 89%. An investigation of an industrial cluster of the Yangtze River Delta found that the leakage accident rate of the acetylene gas proposed by the association was 58% less than that of randomly sampled suppliers.
The platform provides standardized products. In 2023, Jingdong Industry’s trading volume of relevant “acetylene gas” reached 2.3 billion yuan. 85% of screened suppliers of “acetylene gas refill” have been accredited with third-party quality inspection certification. Statistics of the platform show that customers purchasing from suppliers who carry “explosion-proof storage and transportation” logos have only 17% equipment damage claims rates compared with regular merchants.
Mass production enterprises like to build their own supply chain for quality control, Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory by vertical integration of acetylene supply chain, saving 22% of the cost of welding material, its own building filling station equipped with laser mark detector, capable of controlling the purity content of the cylinder below 0.1ppm. Though the initial investment of this mode costs ¥30 million, it can be recovered within three years by saving quality penalty.
The government regulation system provides open data to support decision-making, and the China Special equipment safety supervision and management platform has data on 127,000 acetylene filling equipment in China, of which the pass rate in 2023 is 88.6%, and the pass rate for Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces is 94% and 91%, respectively. Platform statistics indicate that the proportion of customer complaints of firms having been supervised and inspected for three years in a row is 41% less than for new firms.
Foreign brand cooperation can improve safety, and the Chinese acetylene gas refill suppliers of Lincoln Electric are equipped with automatic pressure regulating devices to reduce transportation leakage rates to below 0.03%. When a foreign automobile manufacturer chose 3M certified sealing material for gas cylinders, the loss of gas was reduced from 120kg per month to 23kg, and the annual cost savings of one production line was ¥180,000.
Technical measures to support risk management and control, after a provincial industrial gas platform rolled out the blockchain traceability system, the whole process of “acetylene gas refill” can be tracked, customer complaint handling time is under 2 hours, investment in system development is 4.5% of system yearly revenue, yet customer retention increased by 37%. The application of UAV inspection technology increases the efficiency of tank leak detection by 5 times, and the cost of a single inspection is reduced to ¥150 from ¥800.
The differences in insurance fees reflect the reliability of suppliers, and the global average premium of acetylene gas filling companies in 2023 is 28,000 yuan/year, but with the ISO 14001 environmental management system certification, the premium can be reduced by 28%-35%. After the deployment of an AI risk assessment system in a chemical park, the fire insurance premium fell from ¥18,000 per year to ¥11,000 per year, but the maintenance cost of the system was 28% of the premium price. According to the study, if the leakage rate is maintained below 0.05%, the total life cycle maintenance cost can be saved ¥120 thousand yuan/thousand bottles.