Design of hydrostatic pressure retainment tanks for fuel cell vehicles

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Design of hydrostatic pressure retainment tanks for fuel cell vehicles

Mehta, B.V. / Setlock, R.J. jun.

There is a great deal of attention being concentrated on reducing the weight of pressure vessels and fuel/oxidizer tanks (tankage) by 10 % to 20 %. Most efforts are focused at the use of new lighter weight high strength materials to achieve this goal. Proposed is another approach called Hydrostatic Pressure Retainment (HPR), which has the potential of reducing tank weights by nearly 40 % while simultaneously increasing safety and versatility. HPR is an original invention of the authors, an represents a truly novel approach to light weight tankage. Using an ideal HPR sphere which weighs 10 units as the reference - this implies an equivalent (same outside diameter) conventional outer shell sphere would weigh 10/.67 = 15 units. It also implies an equivalent real world HPR sphere would weigh 10/.8 = 12.5 units. So, when compared to a sphere, HPR offers the real world weight savings achievable today of: (15 - 12.5)/15 = 16.67 %. While HPR pressure vessels are expected to be more costly to manufacture than equivalent steel cylinders, they are expected to compete very favorably in cost when compared to equivalent composite cylinders fabricated from relatively exotic light weight materials. HPR pressure vessels are particularly well suited for applications where cost, size, shape, and weight limitations are important, such as automotive hydrogen storage.