Say goodbye to the lack of standards! The \"Technical Standards for Liquefied Hydrocarbon Storage Facilities with Soil Covering\" (SH/T3244-2025) will come into effect on July 1, 2026
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A safety technology that allows liquefied hydrocarbon tanks to be \"buried\" underground has been promoted in China for many years, yet it continues to face a key obstacle: the lack of unified industry standards. This dilemma was officially resolved recently; on December 29, 2025, the industry standard \"Technical Standards for Covered Liquefied Hydrocarbon Storage Facilities\" (SH/T3244-2025), compiled by Sinopec Guangzhou Engineering Co., Ltd., was officially released and will come into effect on July 1, 2026. In interviews, reporters from China Chemical Industry News learned that this standard fills the gap in existing regulations regarding the design, construction, acceptance, and periodic inspection of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks in China. It lays a regulatory foundation for improving the intrinsic safety level of such storage facilities and driving technological progress in the industry, providing a ‘compass’ for the construction of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage systems. Application of safety technologies is hindered by the lack of standard guidelines. Liquefied hydrocarbons, including liquefied petroleum gas, liquefied propylene, and liquefied ethylene, are essential raw materials in the petroleum and chemical industries. However, its high volatility and flammability make its storage facilities potential sources of high risk for petrochemical companies and industrial parks. Xu Chaoyang, deputy head of the equipment department at Sinopec Guangzhou Engineering Co., Ltd. and a senior engineer, said in an interview with reporters that for a long time, China has primarily used spherical or horizontal storage tanks that are installed outdoors. Storage tanks that are exposed directly to the external environment are prone to internal pressure fluctuations due to temperature changes, which causes the safety valves to open frequently, increasing the risk of fluid leakage and fires. Worse still, most traditional spherical tanks are arranged in groups; once one tank catches fire or explodes, it can easily trigger a domino effect, compromising the safety of the adjacent tanks. It is understood that several major safety accidents involving liquefied hydrocarbon spherical tanks have occurred in China. For instance, in 2015, a leak from a liquefied hydrocarbon spherical tank at Shida Technology in Rizhao, Shandong Province, led to a fire. These incidents highlight that there is room for improvement in terms of inherent safety within the traditional open-air storage method. The industry urgently needs safer and more reliable storage solutions. Buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks are one of the solutions. He Longhui, former technical director and senior engineer at Sinopec Guangzhou Engineering Co., Ltd., told reporters that in the case of soil-covered liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks, the horizontal tank body is completely covered with materials such as sand and soil. Only the flanges of the inlet and outlet pipes, manholes, and monitoring instruments remain exposed above the soil or retaining wall. As a result, the tank body is protected from fluctuations in temperature, adverse weather conditions, fires, and flying debris. At the same time, the storage environment inside the tank is stable with a low temperature, which reduces the likelihood of overpressure release. This prevents steam cloud explosions caused by the boiling and expansion of liquefied hydrocarbons, thereby lowering the risk of a domino effect and enhancing the intrinsic safety level of liquefied hydrocarbon storage facilities. “Due to its high safety level, the fire separation distance between adjacent storage tanks as well as the safety distance from surrounding facilities can be significantly reduced, thereby saving a large amount of land space. ”Xu Chaoyang added. In fact, this technology has long ceased to be something new on the international stage. He Longhui said, “The standards and technologies for buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks abroad are quite mature.” Germany has been using earth-filled tanks for the storage of liquefied hydrocarbons at ambient temperature and pressure since 1959. To improve the safety of liquefied hydrocarbon storage, since the 1990s, countries such as Germany, France, and Japan have begun to restrict the construction of large-scale liquefied hydrocarbon spherical tanks, promoting the use of buried storage tanks instead. Research on buried tank technology began in China in 2000, and a small number of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks have been used in some Sino-foreign joint ventures, but the process of adoption has been relatively slow. ” Why has the promotion of this technology, which was internationally validated back in the last century, been slow in China? Wang Jinliang, former deputy chief engineer at Huisheng Engineering (China) Co., Ltd., analyzes that for a long time, there have been few applications and limited numbers of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks in the country. The main reasons are the lack of relevant standards in the country, as well as insufficient accumulation of computational and engineering experience related to this technology; whereas above-ground liquefied hydrocarbon spheres are widely used due to their short construction period and relatively mature technology. “In China, liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks are pressure vessels subject to regulation as special equipment, and they are governed by the Safety Law of Special Equipment of the People’s Republic of China. A strict regulatory system exists, and everything must be carried out in accordance with the law. ”Xu Chaoyang pointed out that \"However, China’s current regulations and design standards for pressure vessels, such as the ‘Regulations on Safety Supervision of Fixed Pressure Vessels’ (TSG 21-2016) and the ‘Pressure Vessels’ standard (GB/T 150.1-2024), do not contain any provisions related to buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks. As a result, there are no appropriate guidelines for the design, manufacturing, construction inspection, periodic testing, and supervision of such tanks, which hinders their widespread use in China. The application of large-scale buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks is particularly challenging.\" ” “Without standards, it is risky to attempt design, manufacturing, and regulation. With no successful engineering cases and a lack of practical support for standard-setting, buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks remain stuck in technical reports and are difficult to implement in actual industrial production. ”Xu Chaoyang said.
Based on engineering practices, technical solutions serve as the foundation for standard-setting. To address the lack of standards for soil-covered liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks, Sinopec Guangzhou Engineering Co., Ltd. took the lead in establishing a comprehensive process that encompasses technology research and development, engineering demonstrations, and ultimately standard formulation. As early as 2011, the company began research and development work on buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage technology. He Longhui explained that, to address the challenges related to the design, construction, acceptance, and periodic inspection of large horizontal tanks equipped with soil-covered liquefied hydrocarbon storage systems, the company established a dedicated task force. This team collaborated with equipment manufacturing and research institutions, safety assessment firms, construction contractors, specialized anti-corrosion companies, production units, and inspection and testing organizations to carry out comprehensive efforts toward solving these issues. Through years of effort, a comprehensive set of technologies for storing liquefied hydrocarbons using covered storage methods has been developed, encompassing storage and transportation processes as well as automatic control techniques; design and anti-corrosion methods for horizontal steel storage tanks covered with soil; techniques for the layout of equipment and pipelines; methods for ground treatment and the design of the soil cover layer; as well as considerations related to safety and environmental protection. These technologies were approved by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation in 2020, and multiple patents have been granted for them. Engineering practice is the fundamental criterion for testing technology. Xu Chaoyang recalled that from the initial stage of plan design, the company invited the local special equipment safety supervision agency to get fully involved, working together to discuss safety design issues such as corrosion prevention for the buried tanks and leakage monitoring. In 2023, 10 3,300-cubic-meter buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks designed by the company were put into operation at Shandong Jingbo Petrochemical Co., Ltd., where they have been performing well; they filled a technical gap in this field in China. However, shifting from traditional above-ground storage tanks to underground buried storage tanks presents huge challenges. The complex corrosion environment underground severely restricts the long-term safe and stable operation of storage tanks. Tong Baotian, Director of Engineering Operations at the Engineering Operations Center of Shandong Jingbo Petrochemical Co., Ltd., said that to address this challenge, the company took the lead in establishing a collaborative innovation consortium involving industry, academia, research institutions, and end-users. In partnership with Dalian University of Technology and other entities, it systematically integrated optimized designs for emergency protection, thereby creating a multi-level, complementary anti-corrosion system. This has made the anti-corrosion measures for buried storage tanks predictable and manageable. In addition, the company has collaborated with Wuhan University of Technology to introduce intelligent sensing technologies such as fiber optic monitoring, which enables 24/7 real-time monitoring of parameters such as tank settlement, temperature, and displacement. Expand application scope to establish a full-life-cycle \"Chinese standard\". Limited-scale use can only be considered a trial; to promote the comprehensive development of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage technology and related tank projects, unified standards are necessary. In March 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a plan for formulating the \"Technical Standards for Above-ground Liquefied Hydrocarbon Storage Facilities,\" and the work on developing these standards was launched on a full scale. Led by Sinopec Guangzhou Engineering Co., Ltd., the editorial unit, 8 representative domestic companies in the industry participated in its compilation. Unlike similar foreign standards, China’s engineering practices and regulatory environment, with a focus on ensuring safety or regulating the market, require that standards be specific, clear, and actionable, so as to directly guide design and acceptance processes. “The design of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks abroad is primarily based on the EEMUA-190 standard. This standard serves as a design guideline and is intended solely to assist engineering companies in their design work; the specific technical solutions are implemented by each engineering company. Currently, the country’s national standards still do not cover low-temperature buried tanks, as well as aspects such as layout, failure modes, and safe operation and maintenance. ”Xu Chaoyang told the reporter. He Longhui emphasized that the newly released standards cover all stages of the entire life cycle of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tank projects, including design, manufacturing, construction, operation and maintenance, as well as regular inspections. During the development process, foreign technical standards and practical engineering applications were taken as references; a large number of research findings and advanced technologies were incorporated, which expanded the application scope of covered tanks. Various domestic safety regulations and design standards in areas such as safe storage, pressure vessels, and civil engineering structures were coordinated, resulting in the establishment of technical standards for covered tanks that are suited to China’s national conditions and feature systematicity as well as high technical sophistication. This standard specifies the calculation conditions, load combinations, evaluation criteria, failure modes, preventive measures for soil-covered tanks, as well as the relevant technical requirements for safe operation and maintenance. “It is worth noting that this standard introduces advanced anti-corrosion technologies for glass fiber-reinforced photocurable sheets, and specifies a regular inspection regime for buried tanks, allowing for internal inspections as an alternative to the external inspection method that requires digging up the soil surrounding the tank. ”Xu Chaoyang said that foreign standards for buried tanks are primarily aimed at tanks used at normal temperatures, but these standards also include technical specifications related to buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks used in low-temperature conditions. Compared to above-ground spherical tanks, the fire separation distance for adjacent covered tanks can be reduced to 1 meter; the fire separation distance from nearby factories or facilities can be decreased by 25%, while the fire separation distance from residential areas, public welfare facilities, and villages outside the factory site can be reduced by 50%. “There are three purposes for establishing this standard. ”Xu Chaoyang concluded, \"Firstly, it meets the requirements of the development of large-scale, safe storage technologies for liquefied hydrocarbons in our country; secondly, it addresses the issue of limited space available for upgrading existing facilities; thirdly, it promotes the widespread practical use of buried storage technologies for liquefied hydrocarbons in our country, thereby driving overall technological progress in the industry.\" ”
Driving the upgrading of related industries to provide a solid safety guarantee for the petrochemical sector As the implementation date of July 1 approaches, the impacts of this standard are gradually becoming apparent. Standards provide enterprises with clear criteria for decision-making and compliance pathways. “Especially in the context of policies aimed at upgrading older facilities, many old spherical tanks that have been in use for over 20 years are facing mandatory retirement; however, it is no longer possible to rebuild traditional spherical tanks at those locations while meeting the current stricter fire separation requirements. With its advantage of saving land space, buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks represent a practical and compliant technical solution to overcome this challenge. ”Xu Chaoyang explained. The standards also provide unified technical guidelines for various stages such as design, construction, manufacturing, operation and maintenance, and supervision. As one of the key members of the drafting team, Tong Baotian told reporters that in the development of this standard, the company was primarily responsible for compiling the sections on construction and acceptance, as well as operation and maintenance. For design firms, the standards provide design benchmarks and technical guidelines; for manufacturing and construction units, they establish quality requirements and process standards, thereby driving the industrial upgrading of equipment-related industries. More importantly, these standards establish a comprehensive framework for petrochemical companies to make investment decisions and ensure the safe operation of their facilities throughout their entire lifecycle, serving as the fundamental guarantee for achieving long-term safety and optimal efficiency. “Although covered liquefied hydrocarbon storage facilities have higher initial investment, they offer advantages in terms of inherent safety, reduced land use, lower losses due to material evaporation, and decreased maintenance frequency, resulting in significant economic benefits over their entire life cycle. At this stage, to promote technologies and standards, we rely more on their two key advantages: intrinsic safety and space savings. ”Xu Chaoyang said, \"In the past, the biggest concerns for enterprises were technical reliability and regulatory approval; the introduction of this standard eliminates these uncertainties altogether, providing a clear basis for corporate decision-making.\" ” He Longhui believes that the introduction of this standard will facilitate domestic companies involved in the design and manufacturing of liquefied hydrocarbon storage facilities, as well as construction and owner entities. It will have a positive impact on the development of this industry: it allows for smaller fire separation distances between buried storage tanks and adjacent facilities, saves space, prevents steam cloud explosions resulting from the boiling and expansion of liquefied hydrocarbons, reduces the risk of domino effects, and thereby enhances the safety of such storage facilities. Xu Chaoyang also stated that buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage facilities have the advantages of high safety and low land occupation. Given the need for large-scale, safe storage of liquefied hydrocarbons and the limited space available for upgrading existing facilities, this standard integrates proven and reliable engineering techniques to address all stages of the lifecycle of buried liquefied hydrocarbon tanks. It provides a framework that guides designers, manufacturers, constructors, operators of such tanks, as well as regulatory bodies responsible for overseeing special equipment. “In the future, it is hoped that the industry will earnestly study and implement the new standards, while continuously providing feedback and refining the technical details through practice. This will not only help improve the intrinsic safety level of the domestic chemical industry but also create conditions for Chinese technologies and standards to go global. ”Wang Jinliang said that as safety requirements become increasingly stringent and technical standards are further established, the technology of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage tanks is likely to see wider application in new construction and renovation projects within China’s chemical industry, thereby providing a more reliable safety guarantee for the sustainable development of this sector. Looking ahead, the implementation of standards is just the first step. He Longhui revealed that in the future, the drafting team will organize the main drafters of this standard to prepare training materials, aimed at technical and management personnel in fields such as petroleum and chemical engineering design, production, and construction, to explain the applicability, operability, and key contents of the standard. This will provide important guidance for promoting the intrinsic safety design of buried liquefied hydrocarbon storage facilities, and help improve the safety level of such facilities in the petrochemical industry.
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