Yes, it is rocket science

Grantham-based linings specialist Holscot Industrial Linings has won an innovation award from DuPont for developing a new type of fuel tank for liquid-fuelled rockets. Many times lighter than conventional alloy systems, the tanks are made solely from Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene), and are likely to speed the replacement of environmentally-unfriendly solid rockets with liquid systems.

`We selected 100 per cent Teflon because of its ability to contain aggressive liquid rocket fuels in a very light thin-wall membrane without permeation and outgassing in low vacuum,' explains Holscot md David Joyce. The high chemical resistance of Teflon will also make the tanks suitable for applications in chemical handling and processing, especially where very high purities are involved, and for other fuel-tank duties in aerospace applications, he adds.

Making the tanks is not simple, Joyce says. The various steps encompass almost all the methods used to mould plastics, including vacuum forming, welding, heat shrinking and chemical etching to allow bonding to carbon fibre and metals.

The innovation won one of DuPont's Plunkett Awards, named after Teflon inventor Roy Plunkett. The other winners were Coatresa of Barcelona, which has boosted the lifetime and efficiency of shock absorbers by coating them with PTFE; and Poly-Zhaust of South Africa, whose fluoropolymer-based car exhaust system is lighter, smaller and less noisy than conventional exhausts.

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