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Airbus is building a hydrogen fuel-cell engine for aircraft
As part of its goal to have zero-emission aircraft enter service by 2035, Airbus has announced the development of a hydrogen fuel-cell engine designed for airplanes. Unlike Rolls-Royce's recently announced jet engine that burns hydrogen directly, it would use an electric motor just like fuel-cell cars, while emitting only H20. It could eventually be employed in commercial aircraft that could carry up to 100 passengers around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 miles), the company said. (www.engadget.com) Plus d'info...
Several problems. Hydrogen suffers from an energy density problem more so when the weight of storage medium is included. They won’t even allow large oxygen cylinders on board today nevermind huge 5,000 - 10,000 psi cylinders of a flammable gas with massively wide explosion limits. Also a storage and fueling infrastructure is completely absent and would be massively expensive to install.
As I said in the article about the RR hydrogen engine; we must not have learned anything from the Hindenburg disaster. History repeats itself.
There is nothing about this that's remotely like a dirigible.
Except for the fact that they're considering the same fuel that caused the dirigible to explode in a violent manner.
Back in the 80s I thought hydrogen fuel cells would be the future. We saw them tested in busses, transport trucks and even locomotives. The future looked good for hydrogen and then it faded and eventually vanished. Governments and climate activists should have jumped all over it but instead they wanted batteries in vehicles and ignored hydrogen as a fuel source. Sadly I expect the same to happen here, it’s not about viability or efficiency but popularity.