Written respectively by Thomas Roux de Bézieux and Nicolas Demouchy
Toulouse, 30 November 2022 – Airbus has revealed that it is developing a hydrogen-powered fuel cell engine. The propulsion system is being considered as one of the potential solutions to equip its zero-emission aircraft that will enter service by 2035.
As it is described in the title of the article, Airbus has announced Wednesday that they are working on a hydrogen-powered fuel cell engine to have it in service by 2035. It is their hope to start testing these engines onboard its ZEROe demonstrator aircraft towards the middle of the decade. Their hope is that by working on this technology, Airbus could produce aircrafts with little as little CO2 emission as possible. An objective which as been described by the VP of Zero-Emission Aircraft, Airbus, Glenn Llewellyn.
“Fuel cells are a potential solution to help us achieve our zero-emission ambition and we are focused on developing and testing this technology to understand if it is feasible and viable for a 2035 entry-into-service of a zero-emission aircraft,”
He followed up his interview by stating their current objective with the hydrogen-powered fuel cell engine: “At scale, and if the technology targets were achieved, fuel cell engines may be able to power a one hundred passenger aircraft with a range of approximately 1,000 nautical miles. By continuing to invest in this technology we are giving ourselves additional options that will inform our decisions on the architecture of our future ZEROe aircraft, the development of which we intend to launch in the 2027-2028 timeframe.” As we can see Airbus is committed in their work on producing carbon emitting free engines to reduce to CO2 emissions produced by the airline industry.
Saying that hydrogen is a plausible substitute to aviation fuel in engines is interesting but how does it work and how efficient it is are also two important facts to know. For some time already, hydrogen has been identified as a promising alternative to power a zero-emission aircraft due to its lack of carbon dioxide production when generated from renewable energy, with water being its most significant by-products. However, this is where, as of today, the problem lies. According to the European Commission, 96% of hydrogen production is through natural gas, resulting in significant amounts of CO2 emissions. Which would mean substituting the CO2 emission from during the flight to before the flight when the hydrogen is produced. But renewable hydrogen can be obtained via electrolysis using renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Which would mean that hydrogen as a substitute would be only viable once countries have fixed their energy production using renewable energy such as nuclear hydro and the likes.
As for how energy is produced from hydrogen, there are two ways it can be used as a power source for aircraft propulsion. First via hydrogen combustion in a gas turbine, such as in a piston engine. Gaseous hydrogen is burned in a modified gas-turbine engine to generate thrust. Second, by using fuel cells to convert hydrogen into electricity to power a propeller engine. A hydrogen gas turbine can also be coupled with fuel cells instead of batteries in a hybrid-electric architecture. Which is the current solution Airbus is looking at. However, these fuel cells are incredibly thin, only a few millimetres thick and roughly the size of a letter envelope and does not release much energy. Therefore, to produce sufficient power, hundreds of these fuel cells need to be electrically connected in series to form a “stack”. Which in turn are combined into multiple fuel cell “channels”. Through this “channelling” the power needed to use an electric aircraft are achievable.
Sources:
https://www.aero-mag.com/airbus-reveals-hydrogen-powered-zero-emission-engine
https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-systems-integration/hydrogen_en
01 December 2022 – After many months of questioning about the SCAF, Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier confirmed on Thursday that an agreement had finally been reached between Airbus and Dassault Aviation to continue the joint project for the New Generation Fighter (NGF).
As a reminder, in 2017 German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron had announced the Franco-German-Spanish cooperation on the Future Air Combat System (FACS) to replace the respective Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon air fleets by 2040. The FACS is a set of interconnected air weapons systems, one of the major components of which is its 6th generation aircraft, planned to be led by the French company Dassault Aviation.
However, the project is falling behind schedule in the summer of 2021 with the failure of a common ground between Dassault Aviation and Airbus Defense & Space Gmbh, notably in the sharing of industrial tasks and intellectual property. Angela Merkel had insisted at length that the level of work should be equivalent between French and German industries.
Nevertheless, on Thursday 1st December, after numerous encouraging declarations from the various governments over the last month, the industrial agreement for the NGF was announced in the press. The Dassault group confirms its role in the aircraft’s architecture and prime contracting, while retaining industrial and technological protection of its know-how. The project can therefore move on to the 1B study phase, in the development of a flight demonstrator for 2029 (initially planned for 2027). In this interview, we recall the importance of the industrial ecosystem of the three countries and their subcontractors, in France with Thales, MBDA and Safran for the engine. But also, in Spain with INDRA for the sensor activities and Airbus Spain for the stealth technology, as well as the UAVs and the combat cloud system developed by Airbus Defense & Space Gmbh. This project, estimated to cost more than 100 billion euros, intends to use European know-how at all levels of its development.
Finally, as mentioned in Mr Patrick Brunet’s lecture – Defense trends & stakes in Aerospace, the challenge of cooperation in a military project is not only in the fields of technological and industrial expertise. In other words, it is essential to build political consensus between the different countries to carry out this project. Europe is at a crossroad; industrial alliances and the geopolitical context are factors to be considered.
The Franco-German-Spanish project is therefore taking off again, but it is not the only one to gain momentum; a joint project has already been announced, led by the American giants, but also by an Anglo-Italian-Nipponese trio…
Sources:
https://www.meretmarine.com/fr/defense/scaf-dassault-annonce-avoir-trouve-un-accord-avec-airbus
