FASTCURE2 COMPOSITE VESSEL – FASTCURE2

1) Establishment of specifications taking into account the high rates of polymerization at low temperature, the constraints to manufacture the prepreg and the constraints to manufacture the tank while respecting the regulatory and standrards constraints at European and international scale
2) Development of the formulation
3) Manufacturing of the prepreg
4) Manufacturing of tanks
5) Tank test
6) Evaluation of earnings

1) Achieved
2) Completed, current forecast of the polymerization time: 4h45
3) in progress
4) Coming soon
5) Coming soon
6) Coming soon

Manufacturing and marketing of the prepreg by the industrial partner
Reduction of the polymerization time of the composite of the H2 tanks from 10-16 hours to less than 5 hours

A patent pending (sept 2021)

In order to fight against the global warning and cities pollution, H2 vehicles equiped with fuel cell, FCEV, are developed. These clean vehicles having an autonomy similar to the one of conventional vehicles which can be filled in less than 5’ with H2 under 700 bar, require the reduction of cost and the processing time of the main components such as the H2 tank. For these tanks based on thick composite materials with a thermoset matrix, the curing time of the matrix (epoxy) of H2 700 bar tanks, needs to be strongly reduced.
The FASTCURE project proposes to reduce by a factor of 10 the curing time by using innovative epoxy formulations based on ionic liquids as reactants. In addition, it was demonstrated that such IL components as curing agents could bring to resulting materials additional properties (fire retardancy, barrier). The designed resins will be used in a second step to process prepregs and tanks in order to check the relevance of the proposed approach.