Snyder Industries 20000 Gallon Black Vertical Storage Tank

Buying storage by the tanker load at a mine, a mill or a district

Nobody buys 20,000 gallons for convenience. The duty is a site whose consumption is measured in tanker loads: a mine or a mill dosing process water, a paper or food plant on a continuous feed, a rural water district holding a month of supply, a fire and process reserve at a facility with no municipal main. What this tank buys is delivery economics. A full tanker goes in with room left over, so the site stops paying for partial loads and stops scheduling around them, and one tank replaces the yard of totes and small verticals that grew up around the old feed rate. The delivery is a crane or boom-truck set, a route the carrier surveys, and a receiving plan written before the tank ships, not after. What it costs is a real foundation. At the rating this tank puts 250,200 pounds on a thirteen foot nine inch circle, which is an engineered slab and not a pour: full contact, level across the whole footprint, designed by someone who has read the site's soil report, with the concrete pad sizing guide as the starting framework and a berm sized to 110 percent of the tank where the liquid is regulated. Twenty feet of a molded wall is also a wind load when the tank is empty and a hydrostatic column when it is full, so the anchoring detail and the fill sequence are both decided on paper first. Black polyethylene passes no light to the liquid, which matters more at this volume than at any other, because a tank this size holds liquid long enough for light to work on it; it also runs warmer in the sun and hides the level completely, so a level instrument is not optional on this tank, it is part of the install. Take 20,000 gallons to the tank sizing calculator against the site's real daily draw and its delivery interval, and the reserve and thermal headspace to the tank sizing guide; at this volume, getting the reserve wrong is a capital mistake rather than an inconvenience.

Three 20,000s and an 18,800 in one 165 inch shell

All four are the same shell and the same footprint, and the choice among them is wall and rated volume, never site work: the slab, the access and the crane pick are identical whichever one lands on the pad. This black tank is the pick when the stored liquid degrades in light, which at 20,000 gallons and a month of residence time is most treated and dosed chemistry. The white and natural tanks give a level that can be seen from outside, worth having when the site has no instrument and an operator with a flashlight, and the natural one is listed at 5,500 pounds where this one is 5,000, which the sheet gives and does not explain. The 3030000N49 is the ASTM black tank rated on its own sheet, listed at 18,800 gallons in this same 165 by 242 inch shell and at 5,500 pounds; the sheet gives that lower volume in the full shell and offers no reason, so we print it as given. When the site needs the ASTM wall, that is the trade to weigh.

Want the certified one or the plain one? Call 866-418-1777 and say what the inspector asks for; or request a quote on the row you need.

Feeding a big pump off 3 inches and twenty feet of head

• Pump and suction: twenty feet of liquid over a 3 inch outlet is the strongest flooded suction in this catalog, and it changes what the pump has to be. Set the pump below the outlet and it will never lose prime, but it will see real static pressure at the seal on a full tank, so the pump, the seal and the first valve are all selected for the full-tank head and not the average. A dense liquid at 1.5 raises that pressure again. Size the suction line to the pump rather than to the outlet: a 3 inch bulkhead will not feed a pump that wants more, no matter how much head sits above it.
• Prime, start and stop: a pump with this much head behind it starts against an open column, so the start is soft or valved, and the stop is checked for surge. Twenty feet of column slamming a closed valve is a real water hammer event on a molded wall.
• Low-level protection: a level instrument with a low cutoff, not a float alone. On a black tank twenty feet tall there is no visual backup at all, and the last foot of a 165 inch circle is still hundreds of gallons, so the cutoff is set by the pump's submergence requirement.
• Access: the 22 inch threaded, vented manway sits twenty feet two inches up, which means a ladder, a cage and a platform designed with the tank and not after it. Every opening is a permit-space conversation at this size. The lid vent breathes a gravity fill; a tanker pump moves air faster than it passes, so the vent is sized to the delivery rate before the first load.
• Service limit: 120 F / 48 C.

Name the liquid at order and the 3 inch bulkhead fitting, gasket and bolting are matched to it, with a flexible connector between the fitting and hard pipe and the first valve carried on its own support off the foundation. Nothing on a tank this size hangs off the wall. Inspect the band above the liquid line with a light at every opening, and where it freezes, trace or insulate the outlet, the valve and the first pipe run; the body takes ice from the top down, and at this volume the body is slow to freeze and slower to thaw.

Fire reserve, process water and reuse at bulk scale

Process water and dosed chemistry at a mine, a mill or a manufacturing plant; a month of supply at a rural water district; and the stored volume in an industrial reuse scheme, where the industrial water reuse tank topology article puts a tank this size at the head of the train rather than between stages. This is also the size where a private fire reserve becomes a serious option, and the fire-water reservoir design guide is the right place to start that sizing, with its discipline on usable volume, draw-down and freeze protection; note that a reserve has a dedicated outlet and a dedicated draw, and a tank shared with process duty is not a reserve.

One plant in Ohio, a crane, and a route survey

The 3030000C37-BLACK is molded at Washington Court House, Ohio, the only plant on this sheet, and ships as freight at class 300 as the sheet lists it; the freight cost estimator prices the lane to your ZIP, with the listed price before freight. Plan this one as a project, not a delivery: 165 inches across and 242 inches tall is an oversize load off a single origin, the route is surveyed for bridges and overheads, and the set is a crane or a boom truck with slings under the body, never forks and never a strap through the manway. Have the foundation cured, the anchors in, and the receiving crew on site before the truck rolls, because 5,000 pounds of empty tank has nowhere to wait. Fill it with water first, in stages, holding at each one while somebody walks the foundation edge and the base fitting, then drain and dry before the chemical arrives. A tank this size is the one asset on the pad that will outlast the plumbing around it three times over, so write the plant, the part number and the set date on the log the day it lands. Keep one spare gasket for the outlet fitting on the shelf; it is the part that fails on a holiday.