Commercial Hydrogen Planes Will Be Flying By 2024
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Fuel News.
There is also this sub-heading.
ZeroAvia plans to start flying passenger flights between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
I am not as sure as the author of this article, but I do feel we’ll see some viable hydrogen aircraft.
- Airbus have gone from first flight to in service in eighteen months, but not with hydrogen.
- Turboprop and turbofans can be modified to run on hydrogen.
- Hydrogen storage is getting better at a fast rate.
Never underestimate engineers with ambition!
The Anonymous Widower 
ZeroAvia’s press release is at https://www.zeroavia.com/rotterdam and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JYotglhMos shows the test aircraft arriving at Kemble. The day before, they announced a partnership with Alaska Air to put a hydrogen-electric powertrain in a 76-seater Dash 8, capable of 500nm – that’s the best part of 1000km https://www.zeroavia.com/alaskaair – due to start service in 2026. Alaska apparently own 32 of them, along with E175s https://newsroom.alaskaair.com/fleet
Wow. Things are moving fast.
Comment by Peter Robins | October 29, 2021 |
Thanks!
It’s a lot easier to certify a modified aircraft, with just a change of power plant.
Comment by AnonW | October 29, 2021 |
and https://www.zeroavia.com/mhirj states they’re aiming for regional jets in 2028
Comment by Peter Robins | October 29, 2021
Always good to set goals even if they don’t get fulfilled keeps us engineers focussed on the job in hand. Article leaves a cliff hanger of many challenges but doesn’t say what they are but storage must be primary one as tanks are heavy. However weight of fuel will be lower so maybe it balances out.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | October 30, 2021 |
As im on a long train journey looked into this further and one of the key enablers looks like the fuel cell from Hyzon which has best in class power to weight ratio and volumetric efficiency.
https://hyzonmotors.com/technology/#pem
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | October 30, 2021 |
Thanks for that! I think small gas-turbines from Rolls-Royce or Honeywell could be an answer.
Comment by AnonW | October 30, 2021 |
Hyzon’s CEO was one of the speakers at Zeroavia’s Summit last week, as was the CEO of HyPoint. ZeroAvia’s CEO sits on HyPoint’s board.
Comment by Peter Robins | October 30, 2021 |