High Pressure Vessels

What’s a Type 4 Pressure vessel?

To understand why Type 4 is so suitable for this role, you need to know the different types of pressure vessel:

• Type 1: A traditional all-metal bottle made of steel used for storing liquid and gases for industrial processes. Cheap to produce, but heavy
• Type 2: An additional layer of carbon fibre reinforcement is added round a steel inner tank and shares the load with the metal. This gives it added strength and reduces weight, but makes it more expensive than Type 1
• Type 3: A carbon-fibre composite vessel, with a steel or aluminium vessel inside. The carbon fibre outer vessel takes the load. With more carbon fibre involved, costs are higher than type 2, but higher pressures can be achieved
• Type 4: A vessel made of all carbon fibre, with an inner liner of polyamide or polyethylene plastic. Characteristics are a much lower weight and very high strength. Comparatively expensive, because of the volume of carbon fibre