Figuring the Right Safety Cabinets for Handling Reactive Liquids

For storing all corrosive, flammable, combustible liquids, or pesticides, safety cabinets are required. These safety cabinets are made out of steel, polyethylene, or wood. Regulated on a federal level by NFPA 30 and OSHA 29 CFR 1910 and based upon this regulation, they can have owned their standards. These cabinets such as flammable liquid safety cabinets are available online too; you just need to figure out how to choose while buying.

·         Identifying the Right Type of safety Cabinet

As we know safety cabinets are required to store critical liquids and other materials that require extra storage and handling measure. But, how to identify what type of cabinet is needed for a particular liquid? Is there any way to identify?  

Well, yes, precisely there is! Safety cabinets are coded by colors. For example- Yellow color is coded for as safety cabinets for flammable liquid and is used for storing flammable liquid.  Red-colored safety cabinets are used for combustibles. While blue colored safety cabinets are used for corrosives, green color is used for pesticides and poisons.

For waster matter white or grey colored cabinets are used.  Also, there are certain incompatible chemicals that should not store together so if you are to arrange them in alphabetical order, then you should take care that they are not arranged in each other’s vicinity.

·         Choosing the Safety Cabinet with Right Material

While there are various types of material used, polyethylene is the most common material. Mostly, it is preferred for storing material that are hard to handle as their welded seams give better protection for any spill. More importantly, these safety storage cabinets such as flammable liquid safety cabinets are required to have spill containment properties abided by EPA.

·         Categorization of Chemical and Storage Tactics:

Chemicals are categorized into 3 categories: For flammable type chemicals Class I is reserved, and for combustibles- Class I and Class II. Every class- I, II, III can be stored in 660-gallon tanks or 60-gallon drums which can be stored in safety cabinets but a specific ratio must be met. Class I and II cannot exceed 60 gallons whereas Class III can be stored up to 120 gallons.

Tip: You can now order boltless steel shelving online.

·         Ventilation System:

Yet another feature for safety cabinets which is regulated only by state and localities is Ventilation. Safety cabinets that are used for storing pesticides and poisons do not have ventilation features. But it is reversed in the case of corrosives, combustibles, flammables; they are equipped with a capped bung opening. If, in case the fire protection is considered, NFPA 30 specifies that the internal contents must be protected from the outside fire and a ventilation system cannot interfere with this and if it venting system is added, then it is typically ducted to outdoors directly.