EXTENDING TANK LIFESPANS USING INSERTED LINERS

Storage tank specialist John Cornell looks at the need for a change in approach to the use of bolted tanks and tank liners. The subject of tank inspections has been an on-going since the Great Molasses Flood in Boston, Massachusetts, US. On 15 January 1919, a storage tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company, filled with 2.3 million US gallons (8,700 m3) of molasses weighing about 12,000 tonnes, burst. The resulting wave of molasses moved through the surrounding streets at an estimated speed of 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 people, untold numbers of horses, dogs and other animals, and injured 150 more people. At the time, some expressed interest in ensuring that this type of mishap would not be repeated within other industries, since a tank failure of that magnitude, holding a much more hazardous product, would be even more devasting. However, due to the powerful individuals that controlled the industry at the time, no such requirement for tank inspections really took hold, at least in the US, until the election of President Richard Nixon, partially in reaction to the running aground of the SS Torrey Canyon off the western coast of Cornwall, UK, in 1967, which caused an...