You may have built such a car differently - but it is, in fact, a purpose built natural gas car, made by one of the biggest car companies in the world.
That is true, but the Honda GX is just a very slightly modified Honda Civic, NOT a car designed for NG. I.e. the NG tank was just stuck in the trunk of a Civic, reducing the useful trunk space by 50%, etc.
A car
designed for NG would have a full size trunk as the NG tank would be integrated into the body, probably a "flat panel" tank of more than 100 long, small cross section, rectangular tubes, adjoining side-by-side, so they share a common wall. I.e. each rectangle (except for one - one extreme edge of the "flat tank") has only three, not four, walls. This economy of walls, makes the weight of the tank very significantly LESS than the conventional single large round tank holding the same volume. This flat tank serves as the floor board and lowers the center of gravity, compared to a big round NG tank 100% above the floor board, improving the car's stability.
Below I give a crude cross sectional picture of the extruded floor board, which is also called the "flat NG tank", but image each of the "interior Cs" has only three straight sides:
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCO This final O tube is the one that has four sides, but as I will soon discuss and illustrate below, it is really a "flattened D".
The C rectangles would be at least three times taller than their separation - the horizontal space between their centers. For example, they might be 1cm wide and 4 cm tall. If on average (they are shorter where the wheels are) in a front wheel drive car, they might be be 1.6 meters long. Thus, the average volume of one tube would be: 1x4x160 = 640cc or 0.64 liters. If the width of the car is 1.4 meters, then there could be about 125 parallel tubes. So the flat tank's total volume could be: 125x0.64= 80 liters, which is 21.134 gallons, bigger than most gasoline tanks, yet making the floor less than two inches thick.
That would be a "car designed for NG." More stable and with approximate the same travel range as a typical small car between fill ups and an equivalent fuel cost per mile driven of less than $1/gallon cost gasoline! If you want approximately 400 miles range between fill ups, make the roof a "flat tank" also - nice thing about NG is the tank does not need to be lower than the fill point connection as a gasoline tank does. Another nice thing is that there is no "sloshing around" when the tank is only half full. That also helps the stability - possibly compensating for the elevation of the CoG with a roof flat tank added for greater range. Some people have huge heavy baggage ON TOP OF the roof with little stability problems so I would not be concerned with an extra 100 pounds of NG, IN THE Roof.
A square cross section tank requires much thicker walls than a more spherical (in most cases, cylindrical) tank - and the additional piping makes it more prone to failure.
Correct if speaking of one square tank, but not if speaking of 125 "side-by-side" tanks only 1 cm wide. I will admit that the top and bottom of each "rectangular" tube may need a little bowing outward as it spans the 1cm gap between the 4 cm tall vertical internal walls. I also admit that the two edge tubes of the flat tank also bow out significantly. Perhaps each is a 4 cm diameter semicircle.
Then the stress in the two edge tanks would be EXACTLY the same as in 4cm radius round tube. I would expect that 3, instead of 4cm would be adequate "bowing out" to safely span 4 cm. As the flat tank is extruded*, the two extreme sides of it could have thicker walls. Thus these two outer most tubes could only "bow out" 2 cm wide instead of be only 1 cm wide. Effectively the tank would have only 123, not 125 tubes or hold perhaps only 21 gallons, but even with a slight bowing out in the top and bottom sides of the interior tubes, as they span 1 cm between the "web supports" (also called "internal, strictly flat, dividers") the floor board this 21 gallon tank makes is less than two inches thick!
I.e. to again crudely illustrate the right edge of the flat tank (its cross section):
........CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCD with 123 of these tubes giving approximately a 21 gallon NG tank less than 2 inches thick, which also serves as the car's floor board. (The left most edge tube is the mirror image, but I can't print a reversed "D") I have not done the calculation yet for the 4:1 "rectangular" tubes, but based on the 3:1 calculation results, I guess the weight of the tank would be approximately 50% LESS than a 21 gallon single circular tank "eating up" more than half of the car's trunk!
Note that the weight economy is mainly, but not only, due to tanks having only 3, not 4, walls but also due to the fact than the wall thickness required is directly proportional to the diameter. Thus, much thicker walls are required by a circular tank which is, say 60cm in diameter, than one which has an effective diameter of only 1cm. True there are 123 of these "3-sided" tanks but they are 1.6 M long, not less than 1 meter before the diameter starts to reduce in the two hemispherical ends as needed when tank is placed sideways in the car's trunk. Also note that each interior tube of the 4:1 flat "rectangle" tank has 4 cm of flat wall and less than 3 cm of of curved wall for each tube's top and bottom. (Flat walls weigh less than curved walls do when spanning the same gap.)
Please join in the argument I am having with others, especially if you believe math analysis gives valid results even if they conflict with common practice of tank design.
* The extrusion would used a binder and short carbon fibers for strength - probably the same mix as used in Boeing's new 787 "dreamliner."