One bad thing about carbon fiber bottles compared to aluminum scuba tanks is they heat up very quickly.
If I had my way, my Alkin would be connected to two or three ‘T’ bottles. Those are the big ones that stand about five feet tall and hold 330 cubic feet. They come in different maximum psi ranges. With bank bottles I can fill my carbon fibers at any fill rate that I want to. By choice, I would fill at a rate that would not elevate the temperature in my bottle.
For a bottle to get warm is no big deal, for s carbon fiber to get HOT, not a good idea.
Not having a set of bank bottles, I’m relegated to the scfm of my compressor.
Fortunately my Alkin is 3.7 scfm so it doesn’t slam my carbon fiber with a fill rate that gets it hot but it definitely gets warm.
So, I’ll monitor the temperature of my tank with my hand to only let it get warm, then turn the compressor off and either let the tank cool and then restart the compressor, or finish it off later at some point.
One negative to a hot fill is that your psi will drop as the tank cools. So if you hot fill a 74 cu ft tank to 4500psi and then head off to the range, you’re not going to have the volume/ psi that you hoped for.
In the case of a Yong Heng or similar compressors, their scfm out put is quite low so tank heating might be less, but, the heat of compression is there so you still need to be aware of heating.
Running my compressor is still significantly easier and faster than hand loading ammo for gunpowder burners so I’m quite happy with whatever I need to do to have an air supply.
Randy
