Cookson And Zinn (PTL) Limited

Underground Tanks

Underground Tanks

Our underground tanks are manufactured in accordance with BS.EN.12285-1:2018, and are widely used for the storage of fuel.

Although mostly out of sight we estimate that there are approximately 25,000 underground fuel storage tanks under the forecourts of the UK’s filling stations, over 12,500 of these were manufactured and supplied by Cookson & Zinn.

Underground tanks benefit from being double-skinned, essentially a tank within a tank. They can also be configured to have more than one compartment allowing different liquids to be stored in one tank. These tanks do not incorporate a bund like many above-ground tanks but do incorporate continuous leak detection via a pressure monitoring system. To ensure the integrity of both the inner and outer tank a small pressure is applied to the space between the two tanks, this is known as the interstitial space. This pressure is constantly monitored and in the event of either skin being compromised air will either bubble into the fuel or leak to ground and an alarm is triggered, this is known as Class 1 leak detection. This alarm system can easily be incorporated into a bigger facilities management system.