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Avoiding ground water pollution at tank farm
TraceTek systems provide early warning of oil leaks into soil.
CASE STUDY: Coast Oil Co., San Jose, USA
The Risk
Coast Oil Co. one of the USA's largest distributors of gasoline, diesel fuel and lubricants, sought the most effective means of fulfilling its responsibility to ensure it met the Regional Water Quality Control Board's standards for the prevention of ground water pollution at its San Jose tank farm. Here the company has twelve closely grouped small diameter tanks. The challenge was to retro-fit this facility with and effective leak detection system to monitor the soil beneath the tanks without interrupting commercial operations.
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The Solution
Tyco Thermal Controls provided the solution with its cable-based TraceTek leak detection system using TT5000 sensing cable which contains a hydrocarbon scavenging material. Installed within PVC conduit in the soil beneath fuel tanks it offers a system capable of quickly detecting fuel leaks. Any spillage is drawn into the conduit by capillary action and contact is absorbed by the cable jacket which swells and as contact is made with the electrodes in the cable core leak detection is achieved. TraceTek systems are offered with continuous monitoring equipment for very quick detecting, precise locating and triggering alerts.
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Specific Application
At this tank farm, rather than continuous monitoring, Coast Oil operators opted to make for periodic measurements with a battery-powered TraceTek test instrument at junction boxes on vertical risers. The Company's rationale was simply to detect minor floor plate leaks while still small seepage and consequently taking a few extra days to interrogate the system will have little or no impact on the cost or volume of soil remediation. Whilst the closeness of the tanks posed working space limitations for the installers, they overcame them using a small, manoeuvrable horizontal drilling machine, operating an air-ram boring tools rather than a rotating drill bit.
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