`Improved lightning-resistant flexible gas tubing development`

They came up with better materials. [Tom holds up an alternative product.] This is a slightly conductive polyethylene with carbon black in it, yellow lettering because it's fuel gas. This is actually a better product. It's got two layers of conductive plastic with added carbon black, and a layer of aluminum. The yellow CSST pipe — it'll take a tenth of a coulomb to perforate the stainless steel. An average lightning strike has five coulombs of energy. So 1/50th the energy of an average lightning strike will perforate the yellow stuff. The product you've got takes about five coulombs. This new stuff will take eighty coulombs. Just don't get hit by a second bolt in the same spot, which actually does occur fairly often. That's another story.

Gastite's two-plastic-layers-with-perforated-aluminum design rated to 80 coulombs (vs. original 0.1 coulomb). Competitor's conductive-plastic-only design rated to ~6 coulombs.

They realized they had a problem by 2003. A number of patents came out by different people; they decided they could improve things by making a conductive jacket. They basically added carbon black to the plastic, and now it looks like an automobile tire with carbon black in it. One of the products made by Gastite actually has two layers of plastic with a layer of perforated aluminum in between, and the Gastite product will sustain a lightning strike of 80 coulombs — 800 times safer because of that second layer of aluminum. There's another product made by a competitor with just the conductive plastic, and it will sustain about six coulombs.