Hydrogen powered planes to clean up skies
Britain
Plans for hydrogen-powered passenger planes are being drawn up to combat concerns over aircraft emissions.
Academics and industry leaders have launched a threeyear project to develop aircraft that use liquid hydrogen as a cleaner alternative to jet fuel.
The £3.5 million (NZ$6.8M) project, led by Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, will try to overcome challenges including on-board storage, safety concerns, the high cost of producing the fuel and the need for dedicated infrastructure at airports.
It will analyse the case for the development of large aerodynamically efficient V-shaped blended wing body aircraft for long-haul flights, where extra space is needed for fuel that must be kept at minus 250C. The tasks are so complex that academics admit a working demonstration is highly unlikely until the early 2030s, with passenger flight following perhaps 20 years later.
The move comes almost a decade after plans led by Airbus to develop hydrogen flight – the ‘‘Cryoplane’’ – were dropped on cost grounds. However, experts insisted that liquid hydrogen would yield huge benefits, with zero emissions of carbon dioxide and ultra-low emissions of nitrogen oxide. Hydrogen also produces three times the thrust of kerosene jet fuel.
Aviation accounts for 2 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions but this will increase if, as predicted by the International Air Transport Association, the total of passenger journeys by plane doubles to 8.2 billion by 2037.
Progress is already being made in the development of electric aircraft to cut emissions and noise around airports. Last week it emerged that a prototype nineseat hybrid electric plane would be launched next year as part of a long-term project led by Easyjet to produce a battery-powered 120-seat aircraft by the end of the next decade.
Cranfield experts insisted that pure electric long-haul flight was unfeasible because of the size and weight of batteries needed to provide the thrust for a full-size passenger plane. – The Times