|
|
As carmakers opt increasingly for batteries, hopes for hydrogen as an inexhaustible clean fuel are looking up – literally: the gas could be the perfect fuel for emissions-free airplanes.
NASA, Airbus, and startups such as Pipistrel and Eviation have lofted concept planes running on electrons in hopes of creating electric aircraft to meet the industry’s self-assigned goal of halving emissions by 2050.
However, there’s a natural ceiling to the size of a plane that can fly on electricity: the weight of the onboard batteries that deliver those electrons.
The more passengers and distance a plane is designed to serve, the heavier the battery pack. At some point, the weight of the batteries exceeds the ability of a plane to fly any meaningful distance without stopping to recharge its power cells.
Also, batteries deliver less than a third as much energy per unit of weight as jet fuel.
Short-hop aircraft or personal jets might be able to make a go of battery power, but commercial liners that pack in hundreds of passengers and their luggage will have to wait years, perhaps decades, for entirely new concepts in ultra-lightweight batteries.
Hello, hydrogen, a lighter-than-air fuel that packs more than triple the amount of power per unit of weight as jet fuel.
Airbus has tested three hydrogen-powered concept planes that could be in production by 2035; British Airways has put research money into ZeroAvia and its concept hydrogen plane. Universal Hydrogen, led by a former Airbus executive, has raised capital from JetBlue and Toyota.
Engineering challenges remain: the hydrogen infrastructure in test planes is weighty and the planes still require batteries for some tasks, just as a hybrid car does. Also, extracting hydrogen from air is itself an energy-intense process and the infrastructure to refine, transport, and store hydrogen as fuel is barely on the drawing boards yet.
TRENDPOST: Hydrogen-powered small, private planes likely will enter the market by 2030. The time consumed in engineering cost-effective small passenger jets for regional hops will delay hydrogen’s appearance in that segment of the market until at least the mid-2030s.
Getting hydrogen into Airbus and Boeing planes ferrying hundreds of passengers across oceans and continents – the planes accounting for almost two-thirds of the aviation industry’s noxious emissions – will take decades to design, create, and build out not only for the planes themselves but also the infrastructure needed to distill, ship, and store pure, “green” hydrogen in jumbo-jet-size volumes.