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Keep shoppingTank Farm Design: Layout, Bunding & Fire Protection
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5 students
Tank Farm Design: Layout, Bunding & Fire Protection
Spacing, secondary containment, foam & firewater systems, venting and terminal operations — for storage engineers
Last updated 8/2026
English
What you'll learn
- Lay out a tank farm correctly — tank-to-tank and boundary spacing, product segregation and access for emergency response
- Size secondary containment properly, including net capacity and the freeboard for firewater and rainfall that is routinely omitted
- Design foam and firewater systems — application rates, duration, fixed pourers and rim seal systems, and pump capacity
- Size normal and emergency tank venting to API 2000, and specify pressure-vacuum valves and flame arrestors
- Develop the fire scenario set — rim seal fire, full surface fire, bund fire, boilover and vapour cloud — and design against it
- Design drainage and interceptor systems that segregate clean, contaminated and firewater flows
- Specify tank gauging, independent high-level alarms and emergency shutdown for a terminal
- Design tank farm piping, manifolds, loading systems and static electricity control for transfer operations
- Build an integrity management programme covering tanks, piping and containment across a whole terminal
- Apply COMAH and Seveso duties, land use planning and environmental permitting to a storage facility
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Course content
6 sections • 20 lectures • 3h 47m total length
Requirements
- No prior tank farm or terminal experience is required — the subject is built up from first principles
- Any engineering or technical background is enough to follow the course
- Helpful but not essential: some exposure to storage tanks, process plant or fuel terminals
- No specific code purchase is needed — NFPA 30 and API 2000 are useful alongside the course but not required
- No software or purchases needed — this is an applied design and safety course
Description
Buncefield began with a tank overfilling. What turned it into the largest peacetime explosion in Europe was everything around the tank: the spacing, the containment, the drainage, the fire protection, and a site layout that let a vapour cloud form and find an ignition source.
Tank farm design is the discipline that decides whether a bad day stays a bad day. It is also one of the least formally taught subjects in process engineering — there is no single governing code, the requirements are spread across NFPA 30, industry guidance and national regulation, and most engineers learn it by inheriting somebody else's layout.
This course brings it together as one subject.
WHAT YOU WILL MASTER
Five sections cover layout and spacing, secondary containment and drainage, fire protection and safety systems, piping, transfer and venting, and operations, integrity and regulatory compliance.
You will learn tank-to-tank and boundary spacing and what drives it; how to size a bund correctly including the freeboard for firewater and rainfall that is so often omitted; how to segregate clean, contaminated and firewater drainage; how foam systems are actually sized and why the industry is moving away from fluorinated foams; how firewater demand is calculated for cooling and foam together; and how normal and emergency venting is sized to API 2000.
DESIGN, OPERATIONS AND COMPLIANCE IN ONE
The final sections cover the parts that get missed — tank gauging and independent high-level alarms, transfer and loading systems, static control, integrity management across a whole terminal, and the COMAH and Seveso duties that apply to storage sites. It closes with the incident case studies that shaped current practice.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Process, mechanical and project engineers designing or modifying tank farms and terminals; terminal operations and HSE engineers; fire protection and loss prevention engineers; integrity engineers responsible for terminal assets; and consultants advising on storage facility risk and compliance.
WHAT YOU GET
Structured on-demand video across 20 focused lessons and five sections, section quizzes and a final exam, lifetime access on mobile and TV, a certificate of completion, and Udemy's 30-day money-back guarantee.
No prior tank farm experience is required — the subject is built up from first principles. Any engineering or technical background is enough to follow it.
Enrol now and learn the discipline that decides how bad the bad day gets.
Who this course is for:
- Process, mechanical and project engineers designing, extending or modifying tank farms and terminals
- Terminal operations, maintenance and HSE engineers responsible for storage facility safety
- Fire protection and loss prevention engineers working on storage and fuel handling facilities
- Integrity and reliability engineers managing terminal assets and containment systems
- Consultants and regulators advising on storage facility risk, COMAH safety reports and compliance
- Graduate and early-career engineers moving into terminal, storage or downstream facility design