In an effort to reduce or eliminate environmental contamination, secondary containment is required by law for all regulated hazardous materials. Secondary containment is one step in a multi-tiered approach to environmental protection that includes stage one and stage two vapor recovery as well as spill prevention.
What is it
Secondary containment is a system set in place to protect the environment from spillage, overfill, or leakage from storage tanks housing hazardous materials. Typically, secondary storage will be a dike system, concrete vault, or double wall steel storage tank. These secondary containment systems must have sufficient volume to hold all of the primary tank’s liquid capacity plus a hefty extra percentage to ensure proper containment.
Secondary Containment Guidelines
When storing and dispensing hazardous materials, great care must be taken to contain and spills or leakages that may occur. To ensure continued environmental protection and health, the EPA has set forth guidelines regarding the proper implementation of secondary containment.
Secondary Containment Volume
The secondary containment volume of a single storage tank must be at least 110% of the tank. Facilities with more than one tank must have secondary containment of at least 150% of the largest tank’s volume or 10% of the total volume of all containers, whichever is greater.
If the secondary containment system is open to rainfall, the system must be hold at least 4.5 inches of rainfall over the required containment volume. Secondary containment systems open to fire sprinklers must hold the water from said sprinklers for at least 20 minutes while still maintaining the required containment volume.
Secondary Containment Construction
Overfill Protection
- High-level alarms
- Overspill buckets
- Sump pumps
Material Separation
Secondary Containment Drainage
Things to Remember
- Keep storage areas locked at all times. Unauthorized access may lead to injury or storage tank damage.
- Cover secondary containment systems to prevent rainfall entry.
- Test secondary containment systems regularly to ensure they are sealed tight.
- Secondary containment surfaces must be coated with approved products to protect the containment system’s surface.
Your Fireguard Fuel Tanks look very good. How long have you been using these?
Very helpful, thank you so much. I am actually designing the containment box for methanol and browsing the net for reference as it is new to me for this workload.
Thaks for this info.
Ariel, please contact us at guerratoolmachine@yahoo.com
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George Packard