3 ms·

Airbus reveals plans for zero-emission aircraft fuelled by hydrogen

5 points by kawera 6y ago

LinuxBender 6y ago
Aircraft use a lot of fuel. Has it become easier or more efficient to produce hydrogen? I thought this was an obstacle for mass producing cars that run off hydrogen cells? How are they going to store all this hydrogen at each major airport? Will this mean a fully loaded plane will be able to land right after it takes off without dumping fuel?
- firebaze 6y ago
  The most relevant problem right now is not to produce (clean) energy, but to store energy. Hydrogen could be produced in areas which could not be used otherwise, as long as water exists - making the worse energy conversion efficiency a bit moot. Large-scale hydrogen production could both desalinate water, making it useful to surrounding areas, as well as produce hydrogen by solar power in areas currently uninhabitable. Hydrogen has to be kept at around 20K to be liquid. It could be transferred though in gaseous form in existing pipelines (see e.g. https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-pipelines https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-pipelines), cooled down only at the receiving ends. It could make use of tanker ships, equipped with insulating tanks. In aircraft, hydrogen based fuel needs to be stored as a liquid, requiring expensive (both in terms of weight and of actual cost, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_aircraft for references) insulation, but still it'd be about one order of magnitude more effective in terms of volume/energy than existing batteries. It is hard to achieve similar results with plain energy. It is a bit comparable to this: https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ - latency is much lower with energy lines, but volume could be much higher with bulk transports, like container ships.
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    I hope this becomes a reality. As we speak, the FAA are in talks to change regulations for small aircraft, possibly opening up options for electric and hybrid by 2023. I don't know if they are discussing hydrogen. Not having fuel in the wings will change the flight characteristics, maybe the for the better.
avmich 6y ago
A climate-related problem with jet planes - which unfortunately hydrogen doesn't solve - is inversion traces, which serve as a greenhouse layer. Turboprops don't have this problem, as I understand.

5 points by kawera 6y ago

Aircraft use a lot of fuel. Has it become easier or more efficient to produce hydrogen? I thought this was an obstacle for mass producing cars that run off hydrogen cells? How are they going to store all this hydrogen at each major airport? Will this mean a fully loaded plane will be able to land right after it takes off without dumping fuel?

firebaze 6y ago
The most relevant problem right now is not to produce (clean) energy, but to store energy. Hydrogen could be produced in areas which could not be used otherwise, as long as water exists - making the worse energy conversion efficiency a bit moot. Large-scale hydrogen production could both desalinate water, making it useful to surrounding areas, as well as produce hydrogen by solar power in areas currently uninhabitable. Hydrogen has to be kept at around 20K to be liquid. It could be transferred though in gaseous form in existing pipelines (see e.g. https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-pipelines https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-pipelines), cooled down only at the receiving ends. It could make use of tanker ships, equipped with insulating tanks. In aircraft, hydrogen based fuel needs to be stored as a liquid, requiring expensive (both in terms of weight and of actual cost, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-powered_aircraft for references) insulation, but still it'd be about one order of magnitude more effective in terms of volume/energy than existing batteries. It is hard to achieve similar results with plain energy. It is a bit comparable to this: https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ - latency is much lower with energy lines, but volume could be much higher with bulk transports, like container ships.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  I hope this becomes a reality. As we speak, the FAA are in talks to change regulations for small aircraft, possibly opening up options for electric and hybrid by 2023. I don't know if they are discussing hydrogen. Not having fuel in the wings will change the flight characteristics, maybe the for the better.

avmich 6y ago

A climate-related problem with jet planes - which unfortunately hydrogen doesn't solve - is inversion traces, which serve as a greenhouse layer. Turboprops don't have this problem, as I understand.