The tanks of a mine: what goes on the auxiliary facilities list

October 19, 2026  ·  Indumor

“They are just some tanks.” The line comes up in almost every early meeting on a mining project, when someone runs through the scope of the auxiliary facilities. And it is understandable: next to a concentrator, a conveyor several kilometers long or a camp for hundreds of people, tanks look like a detail. Until you count them. On a recent list for the auxiliary facilities of a copper mine at feasibility stage, we counted 33 tanks of 18 different types, from 200-liter drums to a 130 m³ tank.

The problem: the list arrives late, and thin

On a mine schedule, tanks tend to be defined last. First come the plant, crushing and ore handling; only then the facilities that keep everything running: the truck shop, the lube bay, the wash bay, the camp. And the tank list often arrives with no specifications: a name, a volume and, with luck, a dimension. It is not as simple as it sounds. Behind every line there is a fluid, a pressure, a reference standard, a support and a mountain road the truck carrying it has to get through.

The consequence: a shop without oil and a camp without water

Tanks defined late get built late, and the shop, lube bay or camp start up on temporary fixes that are hard to remove later. Tanks defined wrong lead to expensive mistakes: a carbon steel potable water tank without a lining approved for drinking water, a hydropneumatic tank never designed as a pressure vessel, or a four-meter-diameter tank that will not clear a bend on the access road.

The solution: know the typical list

These are the lines that show up at nearly every mine, with sizes from that list as a reference:

• Potable water for the camp and offices: vertical tanks of about 25 m³, in stainless steel or in carbon steel with an internal lining certified for drinking water.
• Reclaimed or process water, of similar size, with a lining for industrial water.
• Hydropneumatic tanks: pressure vessels of a couple of cubic meters, designed to ASME VIII, that hold pressure in the water network.
• Wash water for the truck wash: the largest on the list, around 130 m³.
• New lubricants: engine, hydraulic, transmission and gear oil, in tanks of 5 to 36 m³, plus a set of day tanks of about 3.5 m³ in the lube bay.
• Used oil and used coolant, held until collection and final disposal.
• Diesel: the heart of the list. In that case, ten 75 m³ horizontal tanks, 750 m³ of storage for the fleet.
• Filter drain tanks of 200 liters, with lid and grate, where spent filters drain before disposal.

Watch the diesel: a fuel tank at a mine never comes alone. It needs a containment dike or a double wall, and that choice changes its footprint, its cost and how it is inspected. We cover it in detail in containment dikes or double wall.

On top of that, three design conditions are not negotiable in the Andes. Seismic: much of Argentina’s mining country is highly seismic, and anchors and saddles are designed to the INPRES-CIRSOC 103 code. Wind, to CIRSOC 102, along with snow and site altitude. And transport: tanks of 3 to 4.5 meters in diameter travel as permitted wide loads, so the width of the mine road sometimes sets the tank diameter. For fuels, the full line is under fuel storage tanks; for everything else, steel tanks. And if the project includes housing for the crews, mining camps covers what gets built for that other first job on site.

If your project has a tank list to define, send it as it is: we return every line defined, with materials, reference standards, lead times and a budget to move forward. Reach us through Indumor.

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