The Original Fuel Tank Alarm

The CTS Tank Alarm range originated over 20 years ago. When working closely with our tank manufacturer customers supplying them with their pumping equipment, we identified a requirement in the fuel storage market for a system to alert the user when a tank’s contents reached a set level. Whilst tank gauges visually indicate how much fuel is in there, they require you to remember to check it, whereas an audible alarm actively alerts of this. With this in mind, the original CTS Fuel Tank Level Alarm was born for two scenarios:

• High fuel level - to avoid further filling and an overfill. Whilst some tanks have an overfill prevention device installed, not all do, and therefore the fuel delivery driver needs to be alerted when the tank is reaching maximum capacity.
• Low fuel level - to alert the user to when they are close to running out of fuel and prompt a fuel delivery to be ordered. This helps prevent the inconvenience of running out of fuel, or the cost implications of temporarily having to pay retail fuel prices.

For many years the original CTS fuel tank alarm was purely a high/low fuel level solution, but with advancements in the Pollution Prevention Guidelines, there was now the requirement for double skin/wall tanks. Today in the UK and most developed countries, fuel tanks need to have an outer skin or secondary bund, capable of holding at least 110% of tank’s total capacity should it rupture. To account for this, we added an additional probe and circuitry for the option of a third alert:

• Bund/Double Wall Tank Compartment – to alert of fluid within the tank's bund which may indicate an inner wall leak that needs fixing, or rain water ingress that needs emptying to keep the containment being able to hold all of the tank’s content should it leak.

The CTS multi-zone tank alarm that you see today is now a leading solution to detect and alert of the user of a combination or all three of the high level/low level/bund tank states. As a trusted supplier of tank equipment since 1987, it soon became a popular choice amongst fuel tank manufacturers and engineers, it is well recognised on refuelling tanks used in haulage, construction and agriculture, as well as generator diesel tanks. Some larger tank owners, such as a British Telecom company now actually themselves specify the CTS alarm on the design for their generator supply tanks throughout the UK.

Today, the features of the alarm have been enhanced with relay outputs available to connect the alarm with other equipment, such as an Building Management System or external alarm for remote monitoring. With the addition of a number of different level switches, the alarm can now also be used for AdBlue, waste oil, water and light chemicals as well as fuel.

To make our CTS multi-zone fuel tank alarm as flexible as possible, we offer the alarm box alone as standard. This allows you to select the probes required for the application at hand rather than stock a variety of different alarm combinations. You can select from:

• Single probe - For high level, low level or bund warning
• Double probe - If you need two level alert combinations e.g. high/low, high/high, low/low
  
• For all three zones a double and single probe are required