Design and Development of a Smart Composite Tank/Storage for Home Heating Fuel

The market for FRP and non-corrosive tanks for storing home heating fuel has been rapidly expanding due tothe prevalence of steel tank failures (mainly due to corrosion) and resultant environmental impacts.Additionally, the extreme cost of remediation of oil spills is presenting exorbitant costs to insurance firms,which cannot be justified relative to the insurance policy premium income. From the market growthopportunity perspective, a significant increase in FRP tank production will be necessitated to meet the futuredemand. In fact, according to a recent survey conducted by our industrial partner, the market in AtlanticCanada alone will be in excess of 100,000 units in the next 5 years.The aim of this project is to help our industrial partner to develop a cost-effective and "smart" composite tankthat would offer more advantages over the currently available FRP tank, as well as alleviating its majorshortfalls. One of the major challenges for commercialization of such tanks, is obtaining a ULC (UnitedLaboratory) certification. The industrial partner, though an expert in fabricating large attractive pleasure andfishing vessels, does not possess the required engineering expertise for developing the tank and obtaining theULC certification. Moreover, they require advice and expertise to rejuvenate and expand their compositefabrication capabilities, which is the long-term goal of this collaboration.Some of the reasons prompting this endeavor are in brief : (i) the current tank design is now considered as arelatively old technology, both from design and manufacturing perspective; one can therefore improve tank'sdesign and manufacturing; (ii) one cannot stack the available tank over another tank. This makes thetransportation of the tank less efficient; a more robustly designed tank would enable one to transport twice thenumber of tanks with the same truck; (iii) finally, the tank lacks any "smart" capabilities. Interface with robustremote monitoring and alarming devices in regards to fuel level, leak sensing and refill requirement will besome of the important features of the proposed tank.