Secondary Containment Liner

Secondary Containment: the Backup Layer

Secondary containment never touches the stored product during normal operation. It exists for the day the tank, drum or tote fails. A secondary containment liner goes underneath and around the vessel, across a dike area, a bermed pad or a tank farm, and its job is to hold an escaped liquid off the soil and out of the groundwater long enough to recover it. This is the layer regulators look for during an inspection, and it is what this page and our berms are built for.

Primary Containment: the Liner Inside the Vessel

A primary containment liner is a different product entirely. It sits inside the tank, cistern or basin and becomes the surface the stored liquid actually contacts, which means it is specified against the contents rather than against a spill scenario. Lining a steel, concrete, wooden or corrugated tank instead of recoating or replacing it falls here, as does lining a pond, lagoon or pit. If that is what you need, start with containment liners for tanks, ponds and cisterns rather than the products on this page.

Why the Specification Is Not the Same

A primary liner is in permanent immersion, so long-term chemical compatibility governs the material choice. A secondary liner may sit dry for years, which shifts the emphasis to UV exposure, weather, puncture resistance and how the fabric performs during a containment event rather than indefinitely. The same material is not automatically correct for both roles, and specifying one for the other is a common and expensive mistake.

Matching the Liner to the Liquid

Secondary containment lining is specified around what could escape, not around what is stored on average. Tell us the liquid and we will match the fabric to it.

Fuel and Diesel

A fuel containment liner sits under bulk diesel, gasoline and aviation fuel storage, generator belly tanks and fueling areas, and it is the most common request we see. Hydrocarbon exposure is the governing factor, along with the UV and weather load that comes with an outdoor tank pad. Containment liners for fuel storage are usually paired with a berm wall so the escaped volume is held rather than simply kept off the ground.

Oil, Lube and Waste Oil

Containment liners for oil containment cover lube storage, waste oil collection, transformer pads and equipment laydown areas. The exposure profile is closer to fuel than to chemicals, but the containment event tends to be slower and longer, so puncture resistance and seam integrity matter more than short-burst performance.

Chemicals

Chemical containment liners are the case where nothing can be assumed. Compatibility is specific to the individual fabric and the individual chemical, including concentration and temperature, and two liquids that seem similar can behave very differently against the same membrane. Our fabrics include Elvaloy, polyurethane, LLDPE and PVC, and the right one is determined by the manufacturer's compatibility chart rather than by analogy. Our guide to chemical compatibility and SPCC explains how that evaluation is done and why it matters at inspection.

Dike Areas and Tank Pads

Containment dike liners line an existing earthen or concrete dike so the enclosure actually holds what it was built to hold. A tank containment liner does the same job for a single vessel on a pad. In both cases the liner is fabricated to the dimensions of the area, which is what keeps field seaming out of the installation and makes the finished containment easier to inspect.

Send us the liquid, the dimensions and whether the installation is permanent or temporary, and we will come back with the fabric and the configuration that fit.