Halo Environmental – Secondary Containment

Halo Environmental specializes in secondary containment; we are Western Canada’s largest supplier of spray applied polyurethane containment systems, Envirokrum, Rain Filters, Dust & Erosion control and containment wall systems for the oil and gas, and construction industries. Our company has been operating in Western Canada since 2004 and has operations in Airdrie and Grande Prairie.

Together we are growing at an unprecedented rate and are looking forward to expanding into B.C. and Saskatchewan. We are leading the field in new research and are developing products to compliment our containment systems, as well as developing new relationships with other environmental companies and utilizing forward thinking in order to better service our clients.

Halo focuses its’ efforts into providing cost effective, environmentally friendly solutions to help keep our environment clean and healthy for future generations.

When you are considering secondary containment systems there are a numbers of factors you need to consider.

1) How do you define secondary containment?

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 spray applied polyurethane. 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.

2) What are the guidelines for secondary containment?

The Energy Utilites Board has Directive 55 in place to provide guidelines for secondary containment. As per section 5.3.2.1 of directive 55:

“The area around a single-walled aboveground storage tank must have a secondary containment system designed to contain leakage and prevent it from impacting the surrounding environment. Secondary containment systems must consist of an impervious liner and a dike. At in situ oil sands operations, if a conventional dike interferes with operations (e.g., production trucking and tank clean-outs), the secondary containment system must be lined and graded to collection area(s) so that the system meets the capacity requirement of a conventional diked system, as outlined in Section 5.3.2.1(a).

The area within the secondary containment system must be graded to a sump or low-lying area (within the diked area) to allow for the collection of rainwater, snow-melt water, and any possible leakage from the tanks. No uncontrolled discharge of collected fluids or discharge of untested fluids is permitted.

3) How should secondary containment systems be constructed?

The secondary containment system must be constructed of materials that, at the least, can contain any spills or leakages between inspection periods. Materials such as polyurethane work great for these purposes as it has outstanding life expectancy and performance, resistance to aggressively corrosive environments, high abrasion resistance, fast application, low and cold temperature curing capability, and strong adhesion.