Technology Outline (Process Description)

This project proposes to design and develop a graphene based high-performance and lightweight compressed hydrogen storage tank demonstrator for vehicular applciations. The tank will be composed of:

• High density polymer liner (UHMWPE/HDPE)
• Graphene low permeability layer and
• Graphene and related materials reinforced matrix CFRP composite overwrapped
• The proposed tank exploits the material properties of Graphene reinforced carbon fiber/epoxy composite i.e. like impermeability, higher tensile strength, fatigue strength and impact strength etc. (30-40% improvement is found in house experiments), to develop a experimental prototype/ demonstrator with the following features:
• High strength and Low weight
• Low-permeability
• Damage Tolerance under static burst, fatigue, and impact loading conditions

Overall the project shall have technical contributions as followings:

• Use of low cost Graphene (Rs. 20-30/gm) as nano additive to resin and optimized winding patterns to reduce mass and
• The incorporation of graphene is expected to resist the micro-crack formation in carbon fiber(CF)/epoxy composites and H2 gas diffusion.
• Finite Element modeling of hybrid composite structure based on higher order shear deformation theory.