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Airbus Eyes Hydrogen Power for Airliner in Next Decade

Airbus sees hydrogen as the pathway toward its goal of bringing a zero-emissions commercial airliner to market in the next decade, Glenn Llewellyn, v-p of zero-emissions technology for Airbus, said this week. He agreed with other panelists during an FIA Connect 2020 webinar, “Clean Flight – Path to Zero Emissions Aircraft,” that hydrogen ranks among multiple approaches that will be necessary to reach their ultimate sustainability goals.

“We’ve been very clear recently that we have the ambition to bring a zero-emissions commercial airliner to market in the early 2030s, and one of the most promising technologies to allow us to do that is hydrogen,” Llewellyn said. “We believe we need to position the aviation industry to be powered by renewable energy, and hydrogen is a very good surrogate for allowing us to do that.”

Hydrogen can be produced by solar or wind, he said, adding that energy can be carried onboard through fuel cells to drive gas turbines or a hybrid-electric combination of the two. That would enable a significant reduction in aviation’s effect on climate change, Llewellyn said.

“We are talking about making some significant decisions in the 2024 to 2025 timeframes in terms of the technology choices we need to make,” he said, adding that the technology development needs to progress fairly quickly over the next four to five years.

ZeroAvia Targets Hydrogen Aircraft Ops by 2023

Hydrogen fuel cell propulsion pioneer ZeroAvia recently conducted the first flight with its latest powertrain in a six-seat Piper M600. The flight was made on June 23 from Cranfield University’s airfield in the UK where it is working on the government-backed HyFlyer program to advance zero-emissions aviation.

According to California-based ZeroAvia, the flight was the first made in the UK involving what it defined as a “commercial-scale” aircraft powered by hydrogen. The company says it intends to have a 10- to 20-seat aircraft certified with hydrogen propulsion within three years, and a 50- to 100-seat model by 2030. By 2040, it believes it could be possible for aircraft carrying 200 passengers to make flights of more than 3,000 nm.

For the HyFlyer flight trials, the Piper’s single piston engine has been replaced by a powertrain consisting of electric motors, hydrogen fuel cells, and gas storage. According to ZeroAvia, this combination offers a significantly more efficient energy-to-weight ratio than battery-based all-electric propulsion, as well as offer lower operating costs, in part because the technology does not require batteries to be replaced.

Later this summer, ZeroAvia intends to make a flight of almost 300 nm from Cranfield in southern England to the Orkney islands in the north of Scotland with the modified M600.