Secondary spill containment is the containment of hazardous liquids in order to prevent pollution of soil and water. Common techniques include the use of spill berms to contain oil-filled equipment, fuel tanks, truck washing decks, or any other places or items that may leak hazardous liquids.
Secondary spill containment involves the sequestration of hazardous waste to prevent the contamination of local soils and water. [1]
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) guidelines require that facilities that store large quantities of petroleum (products) must have a plan in place to contain a spill. [2] The purpose of the SPCC rule is to establish requirements for facilities to prevent a discharge of oil into navigable waters or adjoining shorelines. Within the electric utility industry, oil-filled transformers are often in need of secondary containment.[ citation needed ] Outdated secondary containment techniques such as concrete catch-basins are quickly losing ground to solutions that offer more cost-effective cleanup in case of a spill or leak.[ citation needed ] One example of a more cost-effective method involves placing a geotextile boom filled with oil solidifying polymers around a transformer. These geotextile barriers allow for flow of water, but completely solidify oil in the event of a leak and effectively seal the spill.[ citation needed ] Many electrical utility companies are switching to this method because it saves them significant amounts of money when a spill occurs, because there is no need to employ vac-trucks afterwards to clean up a spill inside a catch-basin.[ citation needed ]
Portable containment berms are essentially a basin that can catch many different types of hazardous liquids and chemicals. They are a form of secondary spill containment useful for containing mobile equipment such as oil drums, trucks, tankers and trailers. Unlike geotextile berms, portable berms usually do not solidify oil.[ citation needed ] Many companies involved in fracking use spill containment berms to capture contaminated water that is a by-product of the operation.[ citation needed ] Each well site has multiple trucks that transport water used in deep well drilling procedure.[ citation needed ]
An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially the marine ecosystem, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is usually given to marine oil spills, where oil is released into the ocean or coastal waters, but spills may also occur on land. Oil spills may be due to releases of crude oil from tankers, offshore platforms, drilling rigs and wells, as well as spills of refined petroleum products and their by-products, heavier fuels used by large ships such as bunker fuel, or the spill of any oily refuse or waste oil.
A storm drain, storm sewer, surface water drain/sewer, or stormwater drain is infrastructure designed to drain excess rain and ground water from impervious surfaces such as paved streets, car parks, parking lots, footpaths, sidewalks, and roofs. Storm drains vary in design from small residential dry wells to large municipal systems.
A berm is a level space, shelf, or raised barrier separating areas in a vertical way, especially partway up a long slope. It can serve as a terrace road, track, path, a fortification line, a border/separation barrier for navigation, good drainage, industry, or other purposes.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, is the principal federal law in the United States governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste.
Orica Limited is an Australian-based multinational corporation that is one of the world's largest providers of commercial explosives and blasting systems to the mining, quarrying, oil and gas, and construction markets, a supplier of sodium cyanide for gold extraction, and a specialist provider of ground support services in mining and tunnelling.
An underground storage tank (UST) is, according to United States federal regulations, a storage tank, including any underground piping connected to the tank, that has at least 10 percent of its volume underground.
Transformer oil or insulating oil is an oil that is stable at high temperatures and has excellent electrical insulating properties. It is used in oil-filled wet transformers, some types of high-voltage capacitors, fluorescent lamp ballasts, and some types of high-voltage switches and circuit breakers. Its functions are to insulate, suppress corona discharge and arcing, and to serve as a coolant.
Bunding, also called a bund wall, is a constructed retaining wall around storage "where potentially polluting substances are handled, processed or stored, for the purposes of containing any unintended escape of material from that area until such time as a remedial action can be taken."
Storage tanks are containers that hold liquids, compressed gases or mediums used for the short- or long-term storage of heat or cold. The term can be used for reservoirs, and for manufactured containers. The usage of the word tank for reservoirs is uncommon in American English but is moderately common in British English. In other countries, the term tends to refer only to artificial containers.
A geomembrane is very low permeability synthetic membrane liner or barrier used with any geotechnical engineering related material so as to control fluid migration in a human-made project, structure, or system. Geomembranes are made from relatively thin continuous polymeric sheets, but they can also be made from the impregnation of geotextiles with asphalt, elastomer or polymer sprays, or as multilayered bitumen geocomposites. Continuous polymer sheet geomembranes are, by far, the most common.
Mammoth Resource Partners, Inc, is a private company specializing in oil and natural gas exploration in the Appalachian Basin of the United States. Mammoth Resource Partners, Inc. is majority owned by chief executive officer and founder Dr. Roger L. Cory. Dr. Cory is assisted in the day-to-day management of the company by president and chief operating officer Daniel R. Northcutt. Its litigation problems began almost immediately. These legal issues continued with various private settlements and included a federal trial, alleging various securities violations and fraud.
The Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill was an environmental and industrial disaster that occurred on Monday December 22, 2008, when a dike ruptured at a coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion US gallons of coal fly ash slurry. The coal-fired power plant, located across the Clinch River from the city of Kingston, used a series of ponds to store and dewater the fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion. The spill released a slurry of fly ash and water, which traveled across the Emory River and its Swan Pond embayment, onto the opposite shore, covering up to 300 acres (1.2 km2) of the surrounding land. The spill damaged multiple homes and flowed into nearby waterways including the Emory River and Clinch River, both tributaries of the Tennessee River. It was the largest industrial spill in United States history.
Spill containment is where spills of chemicals, oils, sewage etc. are contained within a barrier or drainage system rather than being absorbed at the surface. One method is to use an inflatable stopper or pneumatic bladder which is inserted into the outflow of a drainage system to create a containment vessel. In the event of a spill the stopper bladder is inflated to block the drain/s and to prevent the spilled agent from entering the ground water, stream or river.
Greka Energy, legally HVI Cat Canyon Inc., is a privately held company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration principally in Santa Barbara County, California. Formed in 1999 after the acquisition and merger of several smaller firms, it is a subsidiary of Greka Integrated, Inc., a holding company headquartered in Santa Maria, California, and is wholly owned by Randeep Grewal.
Sawins Pond is a man-made pond created in the 19th century in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA. Its banks were the site of an upscale hotel, and it was a popular fishing and swimming spot. It was then used by Hood Rubber company, and then BF Goodrich. They deposited scores of barrels onto the site, filled with rubber scraps.
A double-walled pipe is a secondary contained piping system. It is a pipe within a pipe, or encased in an outer covering, with an annulus between the two diameters. The inner pipe is the primary or carrier pipe and the outer pipe is called the secondary or containment pipe. The great majority of double-walled piping applications involve wastewater, groundwater, and process safety.
Offshore oil spill prevention and response is the study and practice of reducing the number of offshore incidents that release oil or hazardous substances into the environment and limiting the amount released during those incidents.
C.I.Agent Solutions is a Louisville, Kentucky-based company that specializes in environmental protection services. The company develops products to clean up hydrocarbon spills on land and water. Their main product is called C.I.Agent, a proprietary blend of USDA food-grade polymers that solidifies hydrocarbons.
A bladder tank is a large, flexible container used to store many types of liquids. When maximum capacity is reached, the bladder tank takes the form of a large pillow, hence it is also called a pillow tank.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred between 10 April and 19 September 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. A variety of techniques were used to address fundamental strategies for addressing the spilled oil, which were: to contain oil on the surface, dispersal, and removal. While most of the oil drilled off Louisiana is a lighter crude, the leaking oil was of a heavier blend which contained asphalt-like substances. According to Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, this type of oil emulsifies well. Once it becomes emulsified, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, does not rinse off as easily, cannot be broken down by microbes as easily, and does not burn as well. "That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons", Overton said.
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