In its vision, hydrogen would be produced on site at airports using renewable energy before being processed and transported out to the plane. But what about the cost of all this . At the moment, Liquid Hydrogen is significantly more expensive than conventional jet fuel, but backers of Hydrogen Planes believe it will eventually become cheaper than traditional flight. Zeroavia isnt the only Company Racing to reimagine air travel, though. Aerospace giants like Airbus And Boeing are also developing Hydrogen Planes. But there are still questions over how sustainable theyll actually be. Were going to be using some fairly exotic materials that are very energy intensive to arrive at. What energy are you using to build the Fuel Cell . What materials are you using . How much energy are we sinking into this technology to get something out . Zeroavia has the backing of the Uk Government and big investors and has over
This is the challenge faced by zeroavia, one of several companies working to make hydrogen powered flight a reality. They retrofit existing planes with hydrogen engines. The company had several successful Test Flights with this plane last year. In the original frame, we would be able to fly about 19 passengers. It looks like a lot of kit in there. How would you fit in 19 people . Yeah, so in the retrofitted configuration, it will be about a dozen people. Daniela is one of the engineers working on the engine. Actually, the Fuel Cells are this one. The power is created in these small layers. So you have to build up your layers to create the power to take off an aircraft. This engine could almost provide enough power to get you from london to glasgow, but not quite. If you wanted to scale it up for international flights, would you just make the same thing bigger or is it a totally
System that will allow to have a lot of power, but minimal weight to be integrated on an aircraft is really a challenge. And that probably means completely redesigning the plane. Everything will be shrunk. Some parts of the engine, of the fuel cell, will be sitting inside of the nacelle, and also the storage tank, which is, uh, going to be probably the largest, uh, you know, piece of equipment they will actually bring outside, 0k . Right. So either on the side of the fuselage, or we will hang it on the wing. Making everything fit isnt the only challenge, though. You need to have the Maintenance And Repair organisation. The whole process needs to be certified. We need to provide the Hydrogen Infrastructure to the, uh, to the aircraft. Zeroavia has a plan for that. In its vision, hydrogen would be produced on site at airports using renewable energy before being processed and transported out to the plane
The size that you d need to power a passengerjet would be way too heavy. and there s one potential solution that s getting people really excited hydrogen. hydrogen fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to create a flow of electrons around a circuit to power a motor. and as we all know, hydrogen plus oxygen equals h20. the problem is. we can t do much about the fundamental properties of hydrogen. volumetrically, we need to compress it to get sort of in the ballpark of not quite a third of the efficiency of fuels that we use. that means that we need often very large, very heavy tanks, because they need very thick walls to deal with the incredibly high pressures we need them at. what you end up with is an aeroplane that can t have any passengers in. this is the challenge faced by zeroavia, one of several companies working to make hydrogen powered flight a reality.
But what about the cost of all this? at the moment, liquid hydrogen is significantly more expensive than conventionaljet fuel, but backers of hydrogen planes believe it will eventually become cheaper than traditional flight. zeroavia isn t the only company racing to reimagine air travel, though. aerospace giants like airbus and boeing are also developing hydrogen planes. but there are still questions over how sustainable they ll actually be. we re going to be using some fairly exotic materials that are very energy intensive to arrive at. what energy are you using to build the fuel cell? what materials are you using? how much energy are we sinking into this technology to get something out? zeroavia has the backing of the uk government and big investors and has over 2,000 pre orders from airlines. so there seems to be significant belief in hydrogen despite all of the challenges.