And Universal Hydrogen is becoming a member of the race this week. The firm has a check flight deliberate for its Dash 8-300, a regional plane with over 40 seats.
The main objective is to check out the propulsion system, which can use hydrogen gasoline cells that flip hydrogen and oxygen into water vapor, producing electrical energy to energy the airplane.
The plane will fly with hydrogen gasoline cells powering one aspect whereas a conventional jet engine runs on the opposite. It’s a normal observe for testing out new methods in flight, says Universal Hydrogen CEO and cofounder Paul Eremenko.
Even if the check flight is profitable, there’s a protracted highway forward earlier than cargo or passengers will climb aboard a hydrogen-powered airplane. That’s as a result of there’s quite a lot of infrastructure round airplanes, and a broad swap to hydrogen-powered flight could require rethinking quite a lot of it.
Take fueling, for instance. Commercial airports right this moment have a longtime community to gasoline up planes. Jet gasoline is carried in, often on vans or in pipelines to a central fueling system. Trucks can then choose it up and produce it to a airplane because it sits at a gate.
That entire system may not work so effectively for hydrogen, Eremenko says. Pipelines carrying hydrogen are susceptible to leak, and retaining hydrogen in a liquid kind requires cooling it all the way down to cryogenic temperatures, which regularly means there’s quite a lot of loss when transferring it from one container to a different.
The answer, as Eremenko sees it, seems to be rather a lot like certainly one of my prized possessions: a Nespresso espresso maker. Universal Hydrogen plans to construct and use pods crammed with hydrogen gasoline that may be loaded and unloaded from its airplanes, stopping the necessity to switch hydrogen between completely different containers.
The check flight this week received’t use these pods, because the focus is ensuring the airplane’s propulsion system works as meant. The Dash 8-300 that can be flying can be powered utilizing hydrogen tanks crammed up earlier than flight, however future check flights will use the capsule system to check out how that works within the air, Eremenko says.