The future of energy is here…and it’s pressurized! The latest episode of the Investable Universe podcast features an interview with American entrepreneur and inventor Matt Villareal, who leads a pioneering company, Infinite Composites of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His firm designs, develops and manufactures the liner-less composite pressure vessels for high-pressure gas storage that are increasingly in demand for aerospace, aviation, transportation, med-tech and oil and gas applications. So will the emerging space supply chain become a driver of U.S. innovation and job growth?
“The beauty of space is that things have to be actually physically manufactured,” Villareal told the podcast. “We’re always talking about building vehicles, building habitats, building space stations. Those are the kind of businesses that create high quality manufacturing jobs. We love manufacturing and we think that’s really where a lot more job growth will be created, and we feel like doing that in the U.S. is really important.”
The origin story of Infinite Composites is itself an all-American success story.
Villareal started the firm during his time at Oklahoma State University, where he was part of an engineering team building quarter-scale Formula One cars to race against other collegiate teams, and was in a crunch to redesign the team car’s relatively heavyweight fuel tank on a lightweight budget. An internet search for solutions led him and his teammates to discover composite materials, and shortly thereafter, Villareal began an initial design concept for a new vessel, which later became a business plan, applications for research funding, and initial prototypes.
Since that time, Villareal has raised close to $5 million in funding, including investment from the TechStars Starburst accelerator for emerging commercial space companies. (The company has just completed a new venture funding round to be announced in the near future.) Villareal also holds 6 patents in the field of high pressure and cryogenic gas storage for space exploration and sustainable transportation and has collaborated on multiple technical publications in the industry.
Vessels
Pressure vessels are used to store pressurized fluids inside a tank or other structure: anything from a propane tank in a backyard barbecue to the propellant tanks used in spacecraft and satellites. Such vessels have evolved in recent decades, from the original, heavy all-metal tanks, to refinements using composite materials and lighter-weight metals that reduce tank weight, while still preserving the same pressure handling capability.
In the late 2000’s, linerless composite vessels were introduced–what Villareal calls a “Holy Grail” in vessel evolution–which eliminated the need for any separate metal or plastic liner inside the vessel, storing all fuel loads and the gases just using the composite materials. This opened up new possibilities for tank design of spacecraft and launch vehicles, as every pound of mass sent into space costs thousands of dollars. And it’s been in the emerging supply chain for space technologies that Infinite Composites has found its core market.
Space
Having previously focused only on storing high-pressure gases, Infinite Composites recently performed testing with NASA (at the same test site where the Apollo flight hardware was tested in the 1970s) to demonstrate that their technology can handle temperatures below negative 300 degrees Fahrenheit. This cryogenic capability means their tanks can store liquid oxygen, liquid methane, and liquid nitrogen–unlike other composite materials, which typically become brittle at such low temperatures.
“Typically, the most efficient rockets [use] either liquid oxygen and metal and liquid methane or liquid natural gas for their propellants and oxidizers. Eventually, they’ll all go to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. But when you’re in space, those are some of the only propellants that have the energy density that you need to escape Earth’s orbit,” Villareal explained. “And they’re also some of the only ways that you can get the amount of [necessary] energy density, where you’re on the moon, to escape the moon’s gravity. So those are fundamental technologies for colonizing space.”
Villareal said former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, on a recent visit the Infinite Composites workshop, pointed to the ability to store cryogenic fluids as “one of the most important capabilities that the U.S. needs to build [in order] to maintain space supremacy.”
Hydrogen
In addition to space, other emerging energy applications are driving demand for linerless composite pressure vessels: specifically, the transition away from fossil fuel energy toward more sustainable transportation fuels like hydrogen, where these vessels are necessary for fuel storage.
“Hydrogen, in my opinion, is the most practical solution. It doesn’t get worn out like batteries. It doesn’t lose its ability to store fluids at low temperatures. And I see it as the most practical source of energy for electrification. It’s also the most abundant element in the universe. So, both on Earth and in space, it’s very practical,” Villareal says.
Other use cases for pressure vessels have emerged from covid-19: specifically, medical oxygen tanks for both civilian and defense applications.
While the overall market is growing and diversifying, Villareal says, pressure vessels today make up only a small percentage of the overall market. He estimates the size of the global pressure vessel market, including metal vessels and all the different composites, at $58 billion. Right now, composite pressure vessels, especially the linerless composites, make up less than 1 percent of that market, but that market segment is growing at over 25 percent per year amid a shift away from heavy metals toward lighter composites.
Tulsa
As for starting a space company in Tulsa, Villareal says the potential for a fuller startup ecosystem is there, especially given the state’s longtime focus on energy and infrastructure activities.
“There’s definitely an ecosystem of energy startups [in Tulsa]. When we started the company, we were primarily focused on alternative fuels. But we started having space companies reach out, and they kind of pulled us into the space market,” Villareal said. “I think there is a huge amount of potential here [in Tulsa] for space. Composites and aerospace and have been [among] the primary exports besides energy here in Oklahoma. There’s a great pipeline of talent here, both for engineering and technicians…Really, I think the ecosystem just needs one or two big winners in this space to really coalesce the community around space. So we’re hoping to be one of those big winners.”
